Causatum
by Sildae
Summary: The Sith's careful manipulations begin to unravel at the hands of unlikely saboteurs: the Chosen One's wayward Padawan, a paranoid Jedi relic, and the very men created to destroy the Sith's ancient enemy. But as the balance of power slips inexorably towards the Dark, the Light ensures hope will remain. Post S5, incorporates S6, into SW: ROTS.
1. Prologue

Star Wars, its characters, and its images are © George Lucas and Disney.

**A/N**: Please note the rating; expect PG-13 fare in the form of non-graphic use and/or mentions of violence, drug use, sex, and Star Wars-style coarse language, plus some. Canon will be…played with. In other words, the 6 original films and TCW series will hold true from certain POVs. Postings will be weekly on Fridays.

While Rex and Ahsoka are paired for good reason in the tag, theirs is not quite the main thread of this story.

**Please note** the prologue references events of the Season 6 episode, _The Lost One_, and the events prior to _The Phantom Menace_.

Heaps of gratitude for the kind, gentle, and brilliant soul, **impoeia**, who has been the absolute most helpful and patient of betas, and thank you, dear readers, who chanced a peek!

Prologue

* * *

cau·sa·tum : noun \kau̇ˈzätəm, kȯˈzāt-\ : something that is caused : effect

* * *

_Four months, fourteen days before the Blockade of Naboo_

Beyond the haze-wrapped curve of Oba Diah, as an ambassadorial shuttle crested the planet's pale, sand-blurred moon, a single burst of light spun too close—and too fast—for the sensors to lock onto.

Far too late, an electronic shriek warned Sifo-Dyas the moment before impact.

* * *

_Nine years and eleven months before the Blockade of Naboo_

"Mind yourself on Felucia," his associate remarked.

Sifo nearly winced. The other Jedi's voice had a guttural, stilted severity to it, as if he had somehow forgotten the mechanics of speech.

They walked together, cowled by the perennial twilight of an abandoned Coruscanti industrial park, leagues and leagues beneath even the trans-rails and narrow streets of the working class. Sifo-Dyas had hoped for a moment of solitude when he'd descended to this level, but his associate had appeared at his side almost immediately, like a particularly long-limbed mynock dislodged from between the old husks of factories and fallen mills.

"Ah," Sifo replied as he sidestepped a disturbingly viscous pool of liquid. "Traveling soon? I wasn't aware of a need for parley among the shamans."

The other Jedi chuckled. It was an unnerving sound, too similar to a lightsaber sputtering beneath an inept hand. "You are dead, there."

Sifo's step faltered just once, but he knew the other would catch it. "A morbid bent for so early in the day," he commented, although he let irony bleed into his voice. It was always night at these levels.

A beat of silence, broken only by the distant, ceaseless thrum of machinery. "I have seen it." Darkness seemed to dip and weave between them, shadows playing on shadows. They passed silently under an arcade of crushed girders, then an ancient millinery. "Yet you will reek of spice," the other finally continued, almost as if he couldn't help himself.

_Spice?_

Felucians preferred their own concoctions of hallucinogenics, not the mainline of the wider galaxy.

The pathways in Sifo's mind refused to connect, although a flicker of the Force urged him to consider his associate's words.

From the corner of his eye, Sifo could see stubbed claws tapping a 'saber, a long face caught in ghostly profile. Somewhere, liquid dripped, a constant tick that marked time in a place long forgotten.

"One must accept the inevitable," Sifo replied after a time, "regardless of the journey,"

The shadows shifted across the other Jedi's shoulders, melted against the bulky lines of his robes; he was just another misshapen tower of debris among all the others. _How appropriate an image_, Sifo thought, although he knew that little thread of resentment should have been released years ago.

Still, Sifo refused to grant him the reaction he wanted.

Silence followed them; Sifo took his time advancing down a broad, open stairway that might've been an ancient promenade's crownpiece, but under the unforgiving weight of passing millennia, had crumbled to a barely recognizable, broken relic.

"Perhaps it will be quick," Sifo mused. He deliberately edged his voice with impatience, close to—but not quite—patronizing; he heard rather than saw the other's telling shuffle of discomfort. "A yerdua poison, or a skullblade to the head."

He needed to think, but not beneath this particular associate's narrow-eyed scrutiny.

"No," the other Jedi murmured, head tilting, as if finally contemplating the peculiarity of his own words. "It was a…strange vision, yes—but the smell…" His nostrils fluttered in distaste and he drew closer to Sifo, eyes flashing green-gold. "Distinct."

Without answering, Sifo continued on his way, intent for the moment on the dry sound of old pods and sloughed metal snapping like bones beneath his soles.

"I only tell you so—" came the rough voice at his side, but Sifo cut him off.

"You have told me." Sifo stopped to finally face the other. "Your business is not at these levels. I suggest you leave to safer venues."

His associate stiffened, but after a long moment, simply bowed. "As you wish, Master Jedi."

* * *

_Four months, fourteen days before the Blockade of Naboo_

Of course. _The Pykes_. How had he not _seen_?

The shriek of metal deafened him as the shuttle's engines collapsed, imploding inward with a throbbing, choking whine.

Sifo-Dyas couldn't tear his eyes from the wildly spinning gimbal-read, even as the pressure tugged and pushed him down against the console.

A rush of the Force—he lurched—there was light and heat, and it all shattered against his mind.

Seconds—minutes—an eternity—Sifo thought he heard a shout, and wondered at the swell of terror from the bloodied figure at his side.

Surely Silman would already be dead.

* * *

_Nine years and eleven months before the Blockade of Naboo_

Sifo left his associate to the abandoned park and let his own irritation slide away into the shadows.

Hours later, he surfaced to the smooth stone and clean light of the Temple and his small, bare quarters—only to sag to his knees as the Force rushed forward and pulled with cutting sharpness, blinding with its faces and armored bodies and the flashing pain of fire. Sifo retched, unable to control his body or even wrench his mind from the blood that flowed like molten transparisteel...and then felt that rising hunger, dark and wild and insatiable.

Gasping, desperate for air, he reached for something, _anything _familiar to anchor him—but there was only his lightsaber, cool beneath his palm and pulsing with its own flicker of familiarity.

It wasn't until he climbed higher, up into the chamber at the Spire of Tranquility's summit, that Sifo managed to find his center again. He watched the gleaming lines of Coruscant's wealth zigzag below, vividly bright against the hazy surface night, as his still-shaking fingers traced the sleek curves of his lightsaber hilt. From above, the ecumenopolis looked clean, luminous, benign.

Why now? This wasn't the first time the Force had flickered with the pulse of a coming darkness, but never with an intensity that had left him heaving and drenched with sweat. What could have happened that the Force would lash out _now_?

Willingly this time, he sank into the endless stream of thought and time and intent; let the light and dark mingle in crystalline focus; let that sharp-edged clarity guide him as it had through decades in the Underworld.

Perhaps...

Perhaps a shadow could exist in places where he could not.

* * *

_Four months, fourteen day_s _before the_ _Blockade of Naboo_

Around him, outside him, metal screamed against metal and blood pooled—hot, metallic, _still living_—in his mouth.

With a bone-shattering slam, the shuttle hit atmosphere and began to burn through.

But even through the heat and pain, he felt another presence, a familiar Force-spike needled with the ice of intent and a cold, long-held fury.

Surely not...here?

* * *

_One year before_ _the Blockade of Naboo_

"Complacency. Deception," Sifo-Dyas' old friend and fellow Master murmured. Seated across from Sifo in a deep, nerf-hide chair, the man had been silently studying the swirl of a golden liqueur for almost five minutes, long fingers idly turning the Vors-glass goblet. From his seat beyond a low kriin-wood table, Sifo watched each carefully etched edge flash in the setla-lamplight. "The Senate reeks of it."

The elder Jedi tipped the goblet and scrutinized the flow of liquid as it spilled out of the glass and into the cool air of the library. But instead of splashing down onto the wrodian-carpet's thick weave, the liqueur beaded into a fine mist, then spun as a sluggish, airborne whorl, oddly mesmerizing, every drop as sharp and bright as the goblet's chiseled glass work.

Sifo let his focus slide back to the other Master. His friend had aged almost exponentially since the incident on Galidraan, far more than he should have. In the glow of the setla-lamp, the silver of his hair shone bright, gleaming like the tiny drops of liquid.

"Nothing—only these petty quarrels—will direct the Council, if we supplicate before the Senate any longer," his friend muttered. With a disgusted flick of a finger, he curled the liqueur back into the goblet, and after a moment of scrutiny, downed it in one swallow. "These recent conflicts have only proven as much."

The other Jedi hesitated, then poured another three fingers-worth of liqueur into the goblet. "It is simply a matter of time before they find themselves unable to break their gaze from this 'rising darkness' you speak so much of."

Sifo remained mute, his own thoughts far away, once again focused on Coruscant; back beneath the skylanes and shining towers, in the dark places where greater, naked truths always seemed to lurk. A name had been whispered, one that flickered along the razor-edged pulse of the Force; an anathema, but he couldn't trace its source.

_Tyranus_.

"Shall your silence speak for you, my old friend?"

Sifo blinked and refocused on his longtime friend. Why _had_ he invited Sifo here? As far as Sifo knew, the Jedi Master had not walked the aristocratic, expansive halls of his ancestral home since he'd been a toddler—or even then. The estate was all still cloaked in the deep Serrano blue of mourning for the old Count's passing, but Sifo did not mistake this visit for sentimentality.

"They?" Sifo asked carefully.

Dooku's eyes gleamed in the setla-light as his lips curved in the barest of smiles. "We," he corrected himself.

Sifo allowed a sigh, as if in weary acceptance of the same old arguments. "An uncomfortable yet unavoidable truth," he said. "But we must press on. There is no other way."

"Ah." Dooku's intense gaze turned shrewd. "Is there not?"

Ah—there, the reality of the matter. The Force hummed, but all too briefly.

Sifo studied the elder Jedi, traced the deep lines around the man's eyes, the strain written there in tiny cracks, fractured as a shell-spider's web. In months past, Sifo had recognized the shudder of indecision within his friend's Force-signature—and below that, an unsettling pulse of anger.

They were both Masters, carved by decades of service to the Jedi Order, both still members of the High Council. Dooku was brilliant, adept, a force of sheer will and indomitable character. Together, they should've been able to observe the changing galaxy and air more than the same grievances from years past.

They should've been able to do more for their beliefs, rather than be swept along the endless tide of corruption and bloated dalliance that the Senate urged the Order into.

Ironically, that itself encouraged Sifo's preference for the Underworld. There was an honesty to the underlying poverty, a brutal truth in that daily struggle for life against every sentient.

However, it was an area of work that came with its natural consequences.

"We study and consider the mysteries of the Force for millennia," Dooku went on. He rose from his chair and stepped away into the smooth gray light of a diamond-paned window. As a silhouette, he seemed the very essence of the noble he'd been born as. "Will the Senate simply argue for us that the strong are able—and thus the weak shall be unable?"

Unspoken was the culmination of such a theory, hanging like a Force-bent mist between them.

The skin of Sifo's face suddenly felt taunt and hot as he stared at that familiar profile.

"As Jedi," Sifo answered slowly, "we could never allow such things."

His friend chuckled, a low and discordantly gentle sound. "No, we could not, Master Sifo-Dyas."

Sifo considered Dooku for a long moment. The light shifted across the deep, aquiline planes of the other man's face, washing the color of his skin to a flimsi-thin texture. He lifted the Vors-glass to his lips, tendons pulling and stretching across his hands.

The Force shivered, a line of dappled light and red.

"Tell me the truth, my friend," Sifo finally said.

Dooku stilled, profile sharp, goblet held to his lips, a flash of sunlight suddenly refracted against its crystalline edges.

Sifo-Dyas leaned forward, arms folded across his knees. "Do you think it possible that the Sith have returned?"

* * *

_Four months, fourteen day_s _before the_ _Blockade of Naboo_

Silman, personal aide to Supreme Chancellor Valorum, shifted uncomfortably at the Pyke throne's broad stone base and fought the urge to step back and away from the indolent splay of its occupant: Jorn, long-reigning _Sec _and unrivaled head of the Pyke families. The tall, grey-skinned _Sec _was robed and jeweled in typical Pyke fashion—although Silman noted with disgust the spice stains smeared across the _Sec'_s sleeves.

_The Chancellor will not be pleased._

"Advantageous?" Jorn stroked two jewel-ringed barbels below his carapaced skull, thin mouth drawn in a contemplative line. He lifted a carved spice-reed to his lips, drew deeply, and sent a stream of ruddy smoke in Silman's direction. "For the Pykes, perhaps. Or for the Pykes, perhaps not."

Silman fought back another cough; the entire Pyke court reeked of the crime syndicate's signature spice-blend and he was almost certain the buzz at the back of his head was a second-hand high. The spice's muddy haze had blurred the entire vaulted hall, so that all the addicts and guards and slaves faded off into a deep, red-tinted fog.

Before Silman could do more than open his mouth, the Jedi Master at his side reached over and briefly touched his belled sleeve, effectively silencing him.

The _Sec _of the Pykes unnerved him; the Jedi unnerved him more.

"Yes, advantageous for the Pykes," Master Sifo-Dyas said, his voice calm, oddly intimate. He linked his hands behind his back as he stepped forward, gaze never leaving the _Sec_'s luminous eyes.

Sifo-Dyas' deft touch among the varied syndicates had long been observed by Chancellor Valorum, but in the aftermath of Ferrik-Len's bizarre death—and the resultant uproar—Silman knew there was a laser-thin line to walk. Even before he'd left Coruscant, Silman had steered the Holonet and its lesser cronies away from several bloody episodes that had spilled too close to the surface.

But he'd expected…subtlety on the Jedi's part.

"To bring the eyes of so many to your activities—would not the Pykes prefer to remain…unseen?"

The Jedi lifted a holorecorder. Above it, an image flickered to life, revealing a corpse: the unfortunate Ferrik-Len, spread-eagle and pierced through by a decorative spire. Even as a hazy image, the incongruity of high, clean mercantile plazas and pampered citizenry clashed obscenely against the filthy, blood-stained figure.

A crime lord's murder was hardly newsworthy. But the Pyke's decision to display the man prominently across Monument Plaza and slice the image into various advertisement feeds to parade the fact…

_That _had been unexpected. The Black Sun's response had been swift and violent.

The _Sec _slipped the spice-reed into his mouth again, but the smoke merely curled there, drifting up to blur the bright purple of his eyes.

Minutes slid by. Silman repressed a shudder when an addict crawled across the stone slabs to touch his robe's embroidered hem, but a Pyke guard moved forward to kick the rough-furred creature away. It gave a pained canine yelp and subsided into the spice-hazed shadows.

"The Pykes know the power of the Jedi, yes," Jorn finally replied. "But what power do the Jedi hold among the Pyke's chosen alliances?"

The Jedi Master remained still; the holorecorder's image continued to rotate in the waiting silence. Jorn turned the spice-reed between grey-plated fingers, vivid gaze fixed on Sifo-Dyas'.

"What greater power do the Pykes expect these alliances to offer? It would not be wise to rest heavily on...presumptions."

Silman noted the Jedi Master's careful nuance.

The _Sec_ settled his reed across the lap of a spice-dazed Togruta slave girl and, for a moment, seemed to observe the Jedi with an appreciative nod. "The Jedi are wise, but the Pykes have found favor where the Pykes prefer."

A rub of unease, red-tinted like the spice-smoke, shot between Silman's shoulders.

The haze seemed to deepen, burning his lungs and blurring the Pyke's court into nothing more than an odd, half-forgotten impression.

_But why did it all seem only a memory?_

There'd been a call—a discreet chirp of the Jedi's comm that had rattled through the stillness between the _Sec_ and the Jedi Master.

No, this was all deception—he and the Jedi were no longer on Oba Diah. The Jedi had been called to Felucia by his Council.

Pain lanced through Silman's body, bright and hot.

But why would _he _go to Felucia? As the Supreme Chancellor's voice for the negotiations, Silman should've stayed, should've continued the dialogue with the Pyke Syndicate. There was too much at risk. Surely the Jedi knew that an all-out war in the Undercity was more important than a few painted reptiles rattling their spears?

But the Jedi insisted, had gripped his shoulder and muttered, like some madman, "Be careful. We are being hunted."

Perhaps the odd man had sniffed a bit too deeply in the Pyke's vaulted court; once aboard the ambassadorial shuttle, the Jedi had even turned his sharp gaze on Silman and murmured, "Remember this, Silman. All is deception."

Were all Jedi this mad? Silman had tucked away his complaints, but made a mental note to address the Chancellor on the effectiveness of Jedi in matters of negotiation.

Until the moment their shuttle was hit.

He tasted blood and heard screaming, but he couldn't distinguish his own raw voice from the ship's dying shriek.

He could still see, though.

The blurred sands of the moon, pale as his last woman's thighs, filled the viewport in front of him and without thinking, his fingers clenched desperately around the co-pilot's steering yolk.

Beside him hunched the useless shell of the Jedi, stained red. _So they bleed and die just like the rest of us_.

He yanked, felt the wetness of blood between his fingers—_nose up nose UP_—as the yolk slipped from his grasp.

A horizon appeared in the viewport, black as the Underworld. The sensors' shrieks ended with a rattling roar; sound exploded against his mind.

Surely he was dead.

* * *

Spice. Silman could still smell it; still _reeked _of it.

"Silman."

Something shook his body, then a crack like lightning shot through his veins, and he gasped for breath.

"Open your eyes."

The voice was familiar, but strangled by pain and something else.

"Now, Silman!"

It was an effort that cost him more pain than he'd ever thought to bear, but he followed the order; a discolored blur hovered over him, took shape, sharpened into the once-dead Jedi's face, all edged in bright blue and dark shadow. Silman wondered if he'd been wrong—maybe Jedi don't die.

But blood ran in clotted rivulets down the other man's face; his hair was streaked with it and his robes were damp and heavy. The Jedi's lightsaber, alight and humming, cast him in that vivid blue and painted his blood black against his pallid skin.

"They will come, Silman. The Jedi will come for you."

Time and space drifted, shifting like the pale sands he'd seen before, and he wondered whatever happened to that woman. He'd enjoyed her company.

"Silman!"

The Jedi shook him, and the pain that lanced through his body sent him heaving to his side. But the Jedi wouldn't leave him be, and in a crushing grip, he held Silman's jaw and forced him to meet his wild-eyed gaze. "Tell them!"

The Jedi shook him again, and _hells_, it hurt.

"Remember, Silman. _All is deception_."


	2. Chapter 1

**A/N**: From one betrayal to another... This chapter references events from Season 5: _The Wrong Jedi._

Many thanks to **impoeia **for betaing! Thanks for reading!

* * *

"You lack faith in the Jedi."

"I find their tactics ineffective. The Jedi Code prevents them from going far enough to achieve victory, to do whatever it takes to win, the very reason why peacekeepers should not be leading a war."

―Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker and Admiral Tarkin

* * *

_Two years, two months after the First Battle of Geonosis_

_"Padawan Tano, how plead you?"_

It was over.

"_You will be stripped of your Padawan status, and shall forfeit all rank and privileges within the Grand Army of the Republic."_

After _everything_—clone troopers and Tarkin, Ventress and _Force_, even doubting her _own_ mind—the Council's cold dismissal hit far harder, burning through her skin like a blaster bolt to the back.

_How _could this have happened? And _why_?

"_You will be turned over to the Republic courts to await your trial and whatever punishment they will set for you."_

Why wouldn't they just _listen_? Had she ever done anything to make them doubt her loyalties, to make them think that she would even be capable of doing _any_ of this?

She could sense Anakin behind her, boiling with an impotent fury that thrummed against her mind with bruising strength, although the Council high overhead seemed superbly immune to it.

Or maybe they just didn't care.

_"Henceforth, you are barred from the Jedi Order."_

Six of the Temple's faceless guards escorted her to the north entrance and into the waiting circle of an equally faceless—but all-too-familiar—Coruscant shocktrooper squad, Commander Fox at their head. Ahsoka felt the commander's grim satisfaction, could almost _see_ the barely restrained hostility rolling off the other clones. They were soldiers, trained to follow every order, but they _hated_ her and the pain of it hit hard and low.

With a distinct _snick-hiss_, Fox snapped a set of binders over her wrists and an icy crack, like the too-close skim of a vibroblade, shot up her arms, across her skin, and through her mind._ Force-block_.

In her prison cell, mercifully free of the binders but still tingling to the tips of her lekku with the thrum of Force-wards, time slid by in disjointed fragments, broken only by short visits from either a stone-faced Admiral Tarkin or an increasingly desperate Anakin.

It was during one of Anakin's visits that Ahsoka fully realized the vast depths her Order had thrown her into. The Republic's convoluted justice system had grown ever more closed and dictatorial beneath the war's heavy weight, and when it came down to semantics, she wasn't even a citizen of Coruscant—not without the claim of Jedi on her shoulder.

She didn't even have the right to a civil lawyer.

"Are you even allowed to be here?" she remarked, as Anakin ran his hands through his hair and paced back and forth in front of her.

"I've got to do _something_!" And just as quickly, he disappeared.

When Anakin returned shortly before her trial was to be held, Padmé close behind, his Force-signature had hardened to a grim, coal-dark burn that flared only when she mentioned Ventress' involvement.

"Let's go over your defense," Padmé said, steadfast and indomitable, but Ahsoka could sense the senator's agitation...and a flicker of fear.

Too soon, troopers came with heavy blasters and those Force-block binders, but before they could march her off, Padmé folded Ahsoka's hands between hers and gripped her fingers. Ahsoka recognized the hard glint in her eyes and gratefully squeezed Padmé's hands in return.

Ahsoka had seen that particular expression of Padmé's before; it always bode poorly for whoever the senator might face off across the vast Senate theater. Surely Ahsoka had _some_ chance.

"It'll be fine, Ahsoka. We both know how Anakin is."

Ahsoka attempted a wry smile at her Master's expense. "Down to the last second, of course."

Padmé's return smile was warm and surprisingly reassuring.

_Please, Anakin. Hurry._

Through the corridors and over the endless stretches of durasteel plating, Ahsoka actually held onto _some_ small bit of hope...until faced with the tribunal chamber.

It echoed with a cold sterility; every edge and incline hard and rigid, every dip and curve of perforated durasteel sharp against her montrals. Despite the Force-block, she sensed a lingering taint of fear—could _smell_ it, an acrid stench that not even the air scrubbers could remove—a remnant from the hundreds of sentients who had faced off against the Republic's military might.

Only now, for all its towering, grand scale—_Really, could the GAR not do _anything _that didn't involve a few hundred tons of durasteel?_—the chamber was practically crowded; every one of its side chambers and annexes were filled to bursting with senators and her former Council, and afloat between each alcove and over the bridges flitted probe droids, some of them obviously military standard and others emblazoned with the Holonet news stations' sigils.

And high above, as always, sat the Supreme Chancellor.

"Ahsoka Tano. You have been charged with sedition against the Jedi Order and the Republic itself. This court will decide your fate."

The last time she'd stood in that chamber, clone trooper Dogma had hunched above the repulsor platform like a whipped and broken anooba, waiting for his judgment. She remembered the desperation in his eyes—the _longing_—as he'd searched the faces of his commanding officers.

But he'd remained mute and merely bowed his head when the sentence fell.

"When you are found guilty, I ask the court that the full extent of the law be brought down upon you, including penalty of death."

The first time she'd faced the newly-christened _Admiral _Tarkin, in the prison cell after Letta's death, his undisguised hate had surprised her. It seeped away from a righteous battle-fury—that heady, soaring strength she would always associate with the 501st—down into something bitterly cold and calculating, formidable as the stone monoliths standing guard over the GAR's Coruscanti complex. It was too similar to Anakin's anger—that surging, almost unbearable force that could lift mountains if it meant victory.

But _his _was twisted into something...else, and all of it was focused solely on her.

She wondered how many of the non-clone GAR personnel felt that way, maybe towards her or maybe towards all Jedi; if maybe she had just never noticed that growing distrust or distaste or _whatever_ while learning to keep up with her Master—and then learning to lead on her own.

"A Jedi may have been responsible for the murder," Padmé urged, her voice rising in well-practiced appeal as she stepped out onto the defense bridge, "but that Jedi is not Ahsoka Tano. Members of the Court, you are prosecuting the wrong Jedi!"

But as the echo of Padmé's voice faded, Tarkin's slow applause glanced off Ahsoka's montrals, each clap too similar to the numbing blows from another's lightsaber.

"Well said, Senator Amidala." The Admiral's voice, carefully cultured and measured, sent an odd shiver down Ahsoka's spine. "However, if she is innocent, then why was she seen conspiring with known Separatist terrorist, Asajj Ventress?"

Ignoring the icy spasms of her binders and the quick, admonishing headshake from Padmé, Ahsoka jerked forward. "Ventress set me up! My Master will prove that!"

"And where _is_ your Master?" the Admiral asked, a sudden edge to his voice.

_Doesn't like his golden boy where he can't see him_. The thought ricocheted through her mind and surprised her with that quick, dawning realization.

But why…?

"He's trying to find the _real_ murderer!" she snapped.

The hard planes of the admiral's face turned skeletal and a cold light blazed in his eyes. "Perhaps he should be looking at _you_!"

In the brief moment she held his gaze, another chill washed over her—but this time with frigid clarity.

She had trusted the Masters and followed them eagerly for sixteen years—and now, she saw that same misplaced trust at work. The Jedi had offered themselves up as bloody sacrifices to a Republic, only to be circled around and fed on, like a squabbling flock of opportunistic harvaps over a carcass.

Ahsoka just happened to be next.

She only had to glance at the so-called "evidence" offered by the GAR; Ventress—and whoever else might've been working with her—had decided to destroy Ahsoka as both Jedi and GAR commander, and Tarkin only had to grab the hover-ball and run with it.

And now, there was nothing—absolutely nothing—she could do about it.

If she'd just had more time…

She wondered if her execution would immediately follow the trial; if they would just take her out behind the barracks and shoot her like a diseased akk dog. From the hostility radiating off Tarkin, still stinging her skin through the Force-block, she deserved no better. Guilt or innocence had nothing to do with it.

Whatever game Tarkin had decided to play in all this, he'd won.

* * *

"You really think Commander Tano would do this?" Fives asked in an undertone, stepping close to Rex's side and giving the common-room's viewscreen—and the mass of troopers gathered around it—a dark look.

The trial hadn't started until 0900 Coruscant time, but the Holonet had burst into a frenzy from the moment Ahsoka's run hit the news-streams. Between accounts from so-called "professional" panels and assorted feeds, the vast majority of Torrent Company had glued themselves to the screen like sol-struck nunas.

But then, Rex couldn't seem to drag himself away, either.

By some unspoken consensus—or just by the expression on his face—his troopers were giving him a wide berth, so that he stood in a circle of empty space several meters behind the rest of his lounging company, arms folded across his chest and chin tucked close to his pauldron. On the screen, Ahsoka stood defiantly in the middle of the repulsor stand, a bright burst of sienna against all the rigid lines of black and grey.

He hated all of it; it was like Umbara, but reversed and twisted into a drowning mass of images and data.

Ahsoka wasn't the first high-profile case to run across the Holonet; the war brought with it hundreds of captured Separatists and suspected sympathizers, and whenever he'd bothered to glance at a newsfeed over the past two years, every trial was only fodder for some other agenda. Rex never could wrap his head around any of it.

But to showcase _this_ one, like their commander was the next-best thing to a nerf-and-Wookiee show, left Rex with a bitter taste in his mouth. Something was off about the entire, fekked-up mess.

And he couldn't do a damn thing about it.

If the situation were different, he might've been entertained by the absurdity of it all. It was a brighter, cleaner, better-dressed version of Circus Horrificus, and the high-glossed holojournalists and their constant clamor over each other reminded him of a gratifying incident on Moorja, when a certain ARC managed to scramble the droids' receivers. Squadron after squadron of B1s had done an excellent job of shooting each other down—and for a week after, Fives had worn the satisfied grin of a kill-happy nexu.

Rex glanced at that particular ARC. "Weren't you due back a few days ago?"

Fives was still fully kitted out in his gear, even _smelled_ of the stale air from a military transport, and the helmet in his hands sported a few fresh scrapes. Rex doubted he'd checked in yet with Special Ops, per procedure, before stopping by Torrent Company's barracks. But then, this was Fives.

"Got delayed." Fives snorted, eyes on the viewscreen. "Ringo Vinda isn't going to be easy."

Rex shook his head. No Separatist blockade was ever easy, but this was Admiral-kriffing-_Trench_, back from the dead like some Endor shipwreck. When he'd reviewed the stats and parameters for the objective—a joint task between only the complements of the 501st and 330th—he knew the results wouldn't be pretty, even with an entire team of ARCs to help pave the way beforehand.

The Seps were wearing them all down. Even the Jedi.

"How much have you heard?" Rex asked, keeping his voice low and jerking his chin toward the screen.

"Enough."

Rex shot him a pointed look. Fives shrugged. "They sent out reports. Just basics, but...it didn't look good."

No, not between all of Corellia's nine hells did _any_ of it look good.

After they'd brought Ahsoka in from the Undercity, Rex had retreated to his office and stared at piles of flimsiwork and datapads and tried to focus on something—_anything—_else. Three hours later, he couldn't remember a single word that had scrolled past on a 'pad he didn't recall picking up.

When he found himself in the common-room late last night, he wasn't surprised to see dozens of his men hunkered down to watch the unfolding drama.

But the flashes of Ahsoka shown before the trial—mostly grainy, disjointed shots caught by security cams as she leapt through a low-level transrail—hurt in ways that seemed just as grainy and disjointed, as if his skin didn't fit right anymore. The feeling only intensified as the day wore on and the trial began.

Onscreen, Senator Amidala swept forward across the defense bridge, looking serene beneath a fierce metallic headdress and the most colorless dress Rex had ever seen the senator wear. It had the unfortunate effect of blending her into the rest of the chamber, like a bit of the wall in motion.

But Fives' presence at Rex's side seemed to break the unspoken rule of space for the captain, and as Rex watched the senator begin her speech, he noticed Kix straighten from his perch against a hard-backed chair and wade through the other troopers toward Rex, his face dark with intent.

"If _she _did it," the medic asked, folding his arms across his chest as he stepped close to Rex, "is there any Jedi that won't turn?"

Rex fought back a sigh. None of Torrent Company's troopers turned to look at their captain, but he could tell at least a few had heard the medic and were waiting for an answer. A handful, he noted, were troopers that had wandered in from several other 501st companies and were openly curious.

Of course they were. Torrent was known for fearlessness and body counts and securing the most impossible of impossible objectives, and the fact that Torrent worked most often with the "Hero With No Fear" and his fierce little Padawan wasn't lost on anyone.

And anyone in his company would know the juiciest gossip concerning said Jedi, especially the captain.

_Kriffing hell, Kix_.

"I'm just a soldier," Rex said slowly, "but from where I'm standing, it doesn't look like they've proved she's done anything."

"Captain—"

"That's all that I need to say, Kix." Rex knew his voice was harsher than it needed to be. "We fight for the Republic, and part of that is the right to a fair trial."

The medic shook his head, but subsided and moved away to join Jesse, who sat with his back to the screen, absently flipping sabacc cards along one of the battered tables. Judging from the creases along his forehead, Jesse didn't like any of it—on the screen or otherwise—but couldn't ignore it, either.

Kix's attitude wasn't surprising—he'd never been quite the same since Umbara—but it still bothered Rex.

"Funny how Krell never got much of a mention," Fives muttered, leaning toward Rex. "This rates internal comm-reports on the hour and every GAR and public holo."

"This...hit a bit closer to home, Fives."

Fives grunted a non-answer.

The viewscreen cut to Ahsoka, the familiar spark of determination still in her eyes as she stared up at the Chancellor's balcony. In one smooth sweep, the cam rotated to include the lined, weary, yet still compelling face of the Supreme Chancellor, high above her slim form.

Something deep in him ached, and he wanted to hunch his shoulders against the feeling.

"You didn't answer my question, Rex," Fives noted, although he kept his voice low.

The image of three troopers, charred and cut through by the unmistakable lines of a lightsaber, burned bright in Rex's mind.

"No," he admitted.

Fives turned to meet Rex's gaze. "No," the ARC repeated, slowly. "You didn't? Or...you don't?"

"It just…doesn't add up." He shook his head. "None of it does."

Rex recognized the sudden, shrewd gleam in Fives' eyes; it usually led to trouble. And explosions.

"What's missing, then?" the ARC asked.

Rex flicked his gaze toward the screen as Tarkin moved forward. The cam had swiveled to include the half-shadowed alcoves lining the tribunal chamber's walls, all filled with the seated figures of senators and Council members. He rubbed absently at the back of his neck. "Nothing seems to make any sense—not even the evidence."

"Yeah?"

"When she ran, it was—" Beautiful. Horrifying. "I saw three dead troopers, but kark it if I can get access to those feeds. Not even the _general_ could get access, and that _really_ doesn't make sense. And when she was out in the open, she could've deflected or—" He stopped, unable to say it, another dark night too vivid in his mind.

"Yeah, I saw."

It took Rex a moment, and then he turned, exasperated. "Fives."

The ARC shot him a quick grin. "Wasn't me this time. I'm a decent slicer, but not as good as some."

"Then why'd you say you only heard the basics? Fek, Fives, you're in the barracks. Drop the assignment _osic_."

Fives shrugged, unabashed, but gave the captain an oddly assessing once-over. "Wanted to know what you thought."

Rex shook his head, still irritated. "Someday you're going to dig yourself into trouble that you can't get yourself out of."

Fives only chuckled and turned the helmet in his hands, fingers tracing its blue-painted lines before tucking the bucket beneath one arm. "Ah, relax, Rex. It's always been worth it."

Rex narrowed his eyes. "All right, then. What did you see?"

Fives glanced back at the viewscreen and tapped his T-visor. "It's what we didn't see. All the feeds were chopped, including the HUDs. Just a nice cut—" He emphasized with the flat of his free hand, slicing through the air, "—right from her sleeping like a tooka kitten to running up on the Wall."

"That doesn't exactly clear her name." He noticed Kix, sitting stiff and still, and lowered his voice to a hiss. "You got past the encryptions. That doesn't necessarily mean she couldn't."

"It's one thing to be a passive observer in a system, especially ours." Fives shook his head. "You can't just turn off the feed; the system isn't designed that way. My—eh—colleague didn't like what that meant, either."

"What _does_ that mean?"

"A lot of effort went into keeping the entire prison sector in the dark for about an hour, the night Ahsoka ran."

Yet the GAR had presented holo evidence—which included _five_ dead troopers on a segment of corridor he had seen, personally, empty and body-free during the chase.

A chill crawled along the back of the captain's neck. He shifted on his feet, suddenly unable to watch the hard face of Admiral Tarkin as the officer's icy composure seemed to break against Ahsoka's sudden outburst.

_"And where _is_ your Master?"_

_"He's trying to find the _real_ murderer!"_

_"Perhaps he should be looking at _you_!"_

The admiral's words faded into a deep, hanging silence. Rex watched Ahsoka tuck her chin to her chest in frustration and his gut twisted uncomfortably.

Rex had told Commander Fox the truth, even as he'd stared at the three burned bodies of his brothers—the _real_ bodies—on the prison corridor floor and smelled the char of flesh through his bucket's filters: he knew Ahsoka. He knew she had come a long way from that moment she'd attached herself to Skywalker's side on Christophsis, knew she was fully capable of taking care of herself and could hold her own against the worst the galaxy could throw at her. He'd _seen_ it.

He knew she still had a hard time controlling her impulses, and that sometimes her emotions got the best of her.

He also knew she was an utterly horrible liar.

Rex rubbed a hand across his face, suddenly wishing he could drown out the sound of the final addresses and part of him knowing the trial should not have moved so quickly—and another, shameful part of him wanting to ignore what Fives left unsaid.

Something was rotten about all of it.

"So," Fives finally said, "what are you going to do about it?"

"_Fives_," Rex growled.

The ARC's expression instantly hardened. "You'd let her die?"

It was a gut punch. His ears rang and spots flashed nauseatingly across his vision. It wouldn't be like Umbara—and over a year later, he still struggled with what he had allowed, what would have happened if the man beside him hadn't convinced Rex's own troopers to do the right thing.

Because Rex wouldn't step forward and say those words himself.

Ahsoka's execution would be clean and cold, far away from her men, as impersonal and dispassionate as the rest of Coruscant. There wouldn't be any chance for a last minute, desperate appeal.

He'd failed his own brothers before. Would he fail Ahsoka, too?

At a sudden shout from behind, he stepped deftly aside just as a brother's arm shot around Fives' neck. "You vat-head—you're late!"

Tup, wearing fatigue grays and with his long hair still wet from a post-gym shower, was promptly thrown down to the durasteel floor, although the trooper managed to twist away to his feet with a laugh and a nod towards Fives' bucket. "Nice paint job. Did the droids help?"

Rex took another step away from the brothers to lean against a support pillar, hating that he was grateful for the interruption and unable to re-focus on the trial. What _could_ he do? Fek, they were in the middle of the GAR's karking HQ, the whole of the 501st pinned down by orders that came from up high enough to give a rock-jumper like him vertigo.

"Thinned 'em out so you don't get all that hair blasted off," Fives was saying as the ARC reached over to grip Tup's shoulder and then thumped him hard enough to make the other trooper wince.

"Ah," Tup wheezed, rotating the abused shoulder, "you don't have to make excuses. All that fancy gear's just making you soft."

Jesse, who had finally looked up from his sabacc set at Tup's arrival, snorted an abrupt laugh.

"You karking—"

"Shut it!" snapped one of the sergeants from in front of the viewscreen. "They've got the verdict."

Already? Rex cursed himself; he should've paid attention.

"That was fast," Tup commented dryly, turning toward the screen. "They'll acquit her."

Rex threw a look at the trooper, disturbed by his lack of concern. Tup was one of the few Rex hadn't seen stick close to the Holonet feed.

"What makes you so sure?" Kix countered, swiveling in his seat to face Tup, his expression fierce.

Tup only shrugged.

_"Ahsoka Tano, by an overwhelming count of—"_

_"Chancellor!"_

"_There's_ the general," Fives muttered, staring avidly at the screen.

At Skywalker's appearance, a flurry of noise swept the common-room; Rex could see the Supreme Chancellor speak, but Palpatine's words were drowned out by the rush of chatter.

"Quiet!" he barked. Silence was immediate.

"_I am here_," the general said, stepping forward with a familiar, barely-contained fury Rex was intimately acquainted with from the battlefield, "_with evidence and a confession from the person responsible for the crimes Ahsoka has been accused of._"

"Like I said," Tup went on, but Fives whacked him again on the shoulder and Tup subsided with another shrug.

"_Barriss Offee, member of the Jedi Order—and traitor_." The venom in the general's voice sent a finger of unease down Rex's spine.

But even worse—the cold realization that the traitor _was _a Jedi.

_Ah, _shab_._

"_Barriss_?" In that moment, Rex watched all the defiance Ahsoka had stubbornly held onto during the trial simply...bleed away. "_Is that true?"_

Something tight gripped his chest as the cam flipped between Ahsoka's heartbroken expression to the miserable face of the other Padawan. But when the cam focused, the Mirilian's eyes chilled to a disturbingly familiar fervor.

"_I did it."_

Rex's unease only intensified.

"_Because I've come to realize what many people in the Republic have come to realize, that the Jedi are the ones responsible for this war."_ Offee's voice rose and fell with a passion that pushed Rex upright. "_That we've so lost our way that we have become villains in this conflict, that we are the ones that should be put on trial—all of us!_"

Rex heard Fives shift on his feet and mutter a steady stream of curses under his breath.

"_And my attack on the Temple was an attack on what the Jedi have become: an army fighting for the dark side, fallen from the light that we once held so dear!_"

All the karking hells...

"_This Republic is failing! It's only a matter of time._"

Silence held in the common-room in the seconds after; a collective, drawn-in breath, broken only when the Supreme Chancellor gestured for Offee to be taken away.

"Kriffing hell," someone said, an unnerving note of awe in their voice.

Fek. Fek-fek-fek.

Rex let his focus slide off the screen as he stepped forward; only vaguely saw the flashes of bright, sickly yellow from the Temple guards' saberpikes. He let his hands fall to his sides, one to grip the edge of his bucket hard enough to pop tendons, the other to brace against his utility belt.

Snippets of muttered questions, comments, things that did _not_ need to continue in his company's barracks, swirled around him.

"That's it—it's done."

He knew his voice would carry over all the others, noted that all snapped to attention at the hard edge he deliberately added. "We know this war is not for the weak. We know the Separatists will try anything and everything to cut off the Republic's head, to bring us all down—and it's our job to make sure we _keep standing strong_."

He paused, sweeping his gaze from one side of the room to the other, studying the nicks and scrapes and marks of fresh paint on well-shined armor, the hardened or smooth-skinned faces of an almost haphazard mix of veterans and shinies; the bright, clear shine of some eyes and the duller, shadowed regard from others. The same exact faces of too many that he'd already lost, and for all the ones still here, he would _not _stand to have them live in fear of traitorous leaders.

But _why_ did it have to be another Jedi?

"We've got a war to fight, and our commander is coming _home_." His hand tightened further on his bucket; the plastoid grated against bone. "General Skywalker and Commander Tano will expect us to be ready. Ringo Vinda is waiting for us to set it free."

He swept his gaze over the room one last time, then gave a sharp nod.

"Let's get to it."

He turned smoothly, unclipping his bucket and slipping it over his head as he made his way out of the room, even as the collective roar from his men hit his back. He had his commander to see.

Before the door slid shut behind him, he heard Tup's easy laugh. "See? Told you she'd be acquitted."


	3. Chapter 2

**A/N**: All credit for correctness goes to **impoeia**! (...and any errors in the transfer are all mine.)

* * *

"I used to believe being a good soldier meant doing everything they told you—that's how they engineered us. But we're not droids. We're not programmed. You have to learn to make your own decisions."

-Captain Rex

* * *

"I did it."

For a single, suspended breath, Ahsoka thought Barriss would implicate someone else, too. _Anyone_ else—Ventress, Dooku, the Seps, Tarkin—Force forgive her, even the Chancellor himself. Just...someone.

But she didn't and Ahsoka wasn't sure what was worse.

Distantly, she heard the Supreme Chancellor's sonorous voice and a droning echo from the senators, then Padmé's high, clear acceptance of the dismissed charges. The repulsor stand connected with a soft hiss to the galley-bridge, and Commander Fox stepped close, all hulking red-and-white edges as he unlocked the Force-blocking binders from her wrists.

But instead of a familiar, steady rush—strong as a northern wind across Shili's plains—the Force flurried through her mind in hesitant drafts, stinging and spitting like a whirlwind caught between Mos Eisley's narrow alleys.

"Padawan Tano?" Fox asked, head tilted expectantly.

Ahsoka managed a jerky nod and followed him into the labyrinth of corridors beyond the tribunal chamber. No binders, but the pair of shocktroopers close at her back sent a chill down her lekku.

She missed the 501st.

As if conjured by her thought, she sensed Rex—steady as a fanned ember—before Fox turned the corner, so close that the commander actually reared back on his heels.

"Sir." From beyond Commander Fox's bulk came the captain's distinctive rough timbre, same but different from all the others. "Permission to escort Padawan Tano to the speeder pad, _sir_."

Rex's stiff formality was odd and disjointed compared to his mind's steady glow; he _radiated_ warmth, and it felt so…_good_, like a balm to her aching head. It was enough that she could take a deep breath and steady the swirling eddies of the Force; just enough that she didn't feel quite so deafened and numb.

But there was something else there; she could see it in Fox's stiff displeasure and the tilt of his helmet. Even an AgriCorp dropout could catch the undercurrents between the capital's resident corps and the men who actively hit the front lines, but _this_ had a crusting of something else.

Fox hesitated only long enough for his silence to be telling. "Denied." And he continued walking.

Rex's familiar profile, bucket clipped to his belt, appeared past the commander, and when he turned to meet her gaze, something inside her lurched at the abrupt wash of relief in his eyes.

With the tiniest uptick at the corner of his mouth, he stepped to her side.

Ahead of them, Commander Fox's back stiffened into a disapproving wall of plastoid, but he didn't turn or break stride. She glanced aside at Rex and attempted a smile. Weak, probably brittle, but something like a smile.

His chin dipped just a touch toward his pauldron in acknowledgement.

In that moment, she felt a rush of gratitude so strong she almost reached over to hug the captain. Two years of fighting, eating, living, _breathing_ beside each other, from one blood-soaked theater of war to the next, he'd always been the stalwart pillar of determination next to her Master's sheer, volcanic will. Rex wouldn't expect anything more from her right now than putting one numb foot in front of the other—and if she needed to curl up somewhere later and forget the galaxy, he wouldn't think any less of her. Rex, along with Anakin and Padmé, had trusted her when everything else had crumbled to ruins. She owed them her life.

And she had absolutely no way to repay them.

The perforated durasteel at her feet suddenly blurred and she blinked furiously at the heat and pressure pushing against the back of her eyes.

Force take it, she would _not_ cry. Not now. Not with clones at her back who were still radiating distrust—no, that was _distaste_—and Tarkin still hovering like a specter in her mind...

And Barriss.

The last time she'd ever shed tears was as a youngling, when she'd managed to fall off one of the stone guardians at the Temple's entrance. "_Your recovery wouldn't be such an interminable ordeal_," Master Plo had later remarked with a dry humor she still remembered ten years later, "_if you hadn't been standing at the top_." The healers could only credit her Force connection for not being, in Master Plo's words, "splattered spectacularly across the Temple's steps," rather than just the one shattered leg.

The Kel Dor had overlooked her tear-streaked face with his familiar calm. "_Your pride will always push you forward, little 'Soka. Learn to release it, or every fall will prove to be just as painful_." He'd then tapped her plasto-cast with one claw and left her to a lonely recovery.

Ironically, instead of really heeding his advice—she'd been six at the time and not inclined to listen to anyone—Ahsoka had only pushed herself to land _better_.

_Lot of good _that_ did me._

Eyes still fixed on the durasteel plates beneath her feet, she didn't notice Commander Fox stop until she almost walked into his armor. Ahsoka stumbled back a step, felt Rex's gloved hand momentarily against her elbow, and forced herself to take a steadying breath.

_Just get through the rest of the day. Then cry or meditate or beat up a training droid. Something._

Commander Fox had paused at a set of opaque, smoky-gray transparisteel doors, head cocked in that ubiquitous clone way. The corridor they'd entered ran along GAR HQ's top tier, incongruently lavish compared to the rest of the complex; as Senate members and the Chancellor were often called upon to proceed over the most critical tribunals—which had stacked up quickly as the war dragged on—the Republic's esteemed leaders weren't expected to give up their luxuries so easily. No durasteel plating for pampered feet, although the sleek windows along one side only offered a view of the vast parade of barracks, each squat block as rigidly correct as a Muun's hololedger.

As abruptly as he'd stopped, Fox spun on his heel and gave her a painfully correct salute. "Commander Tano, you have been reinstated. Welcome back, sir."

_Anakin_. Only her Master would be able to push that past the Chancellor so fast. Probably without even a by-your-leave from the Council.

"Glad to have you back, sir," Rex said, with a rare smile that reached his eyes. "The 501st is ready and waiting."

Ahsoka stared at them both, not quite sure what to say. Rex's smile dimmed. She quickly swallowed and unstuck her tongue. "Thank you."

To Rex, she tried to convey more—but by the shadow that passed over his face, she probably just managed to look like a larty-blitzed nerf.

"Sir, General Skywalker will transport you to the Temple," Commander Fox said, inclining his head toward the opaque doors.

Ahsoka took another breath, nodded to both men, and forced herself forward through the doors and out onto the three-walled speeder platform—only to meet a face-full of Jedi robes.

"Ouch," she complained, although it was muffled against the solid form of her Master. He still reeked of the Undercity; that old, fetid, off-metallic stench that, unfortunately, she'd become overly acquainted with during the past few rotations.

"I cut it close," Anakin said, voice still rough with relief. He pulled away just enough that she could look up. "Like always."

Ahsoka managed another smile, but this one was weaker and suddenly watery. She couldn't quite meet his gaze; the intensity of his Force-signature was enough to deal with at the moment. "Thanks. I owe you."

"Big time." He laughed, but it was shaky; something about it made her heart ache even more. Maybe sensing her need for space, he squeezed her shoulders and stepped back.

"How...?" she began. Her tired mind didn't particularly _want_ to refit the events after the bombing, but she still _needed _to know.

"Ventress."

"So...she _was_ part of it."

Anakin grimaced and folded his arms across his chest. "To my surprise, no." He shook his head. "I...almost felt sorry for her."

"Then—"

"She said she was attacked, too, by someone who was likely a Jedi...and stole her lightsabers."

The pieces from the factory finally clicked into place, but that clarity tasted bitter. "She told you about my comm."

"Which led to Barriss, yes."

Ahsoka closed her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Ahsoka." His words were soft, but she could hear the underlay of so much more.

A bubble of misery rose up her throat and she had to swallow thickly. "I'm sorry, too."

"_You're_ sorry?"

His spike of incredulity felt like sandpaper. Ahsoka winced, but forced the words out anyway. "_I_ was being targeted—and I wanted to find out _why_—" Her chest tightened painfully and the words stuck in her throat, along with all the other little truths she really didn't want to face.

Anakin understood, regardless; the spitting fire from his Force-signature subsided, but her mind still felt raw from it. Force, she needed to meditate. "And you wanted to do it on your own terms," he said.

Ahsoka nodded mutely, staring past him to the waiting speeder that idled at the edge of the platform. To her surprise, Padmé sat there, her headdress gleaming silvery-bright in the sunlight.

"Ahsoka, sometimes we all need a helping hand," he went on. "Your instincts were right."

She shook her head and finally met his intense gaze. "Not about Barriss."

He hesitated, but the soft blip of a comm interrupted whatever he might've said. With a sigh, he stepped back and gestured toward the speeder. "The Council is waiting."

"How kind of them."

"Ahsoka." Anakin's censure gave way to a wry half-smile as he turned and walked the platform's length. "You won't need to deal with them for a little while."

"Isn't that just delaying the inevitable?"

"Give 'em a chance, Snips." Anakin's smile turned smug, which deepened just a touch as he nodded politely to Padmé and settled into the driver's seat next to the senator. "It's not every day that you'll have the entire High Council apologizing to you."

And would their regret have been more sincere before or after the GAR put a blaster bolt through her brain?

Ahsoka clenched her teeth around the words as she clambered into the backseat. Anakin had saved her life, and he didn't deserve her attitude—despite the fact that her Master apparently thought all was well and good, now that the trial was over and the charges dropped.

"Besides," he went on, "I wouldn't be surprised if they consider this one of your Trials." He glanced back at her and winked. "But even when you're a Knight, you'll always be my Padawan, Snips."

Ahsoka nearly rolled her eyes. "I don't care if they offer me the Supreme Chancellery. I'm not even sure I want to hear what they have to say."

Anakin sighed as the speeder lifted away and gained altitude. "That isn't the Jedi way, Ahsoka. You know that."

And what part of the Jedi way led someone like _Barriss_ to a bombing, murder, and sabotage? Again, Ahsoka didn't say it, but she wanted to.

In the following silence, Padmé turned in her seat to face her. "As your interim sponsor during the trial, the Council invited me to stay with you while they continue the deliberations."

Ahsoka felt a surge of relief at Padmé's words. She wasn't sure how ready she was to face any other Jedi at this point. Anakin was enough; her brain still felt like it had been stomped across by the entire Coruscant Guard. But— "Deliberations? On what?"

"Barriss," Anakin replied, easing the speeder higher and faster along the minor skylane that ran from the military base to the Temple. He swung neatly between other sleek vehicles, their occupants only colorful blurs as they whipped by. "With a full confession, a trial isn't needed. But a sentencing is."

"And as she is still a member of your Order," Padmé continued, her delicate brows knit together in an unusual display of unease, "she will be sentenced by the High Council."

"Well. Glad to know they won't be skewering the real traitor on the military courts."

"Ahsoka." Anakin's voice held enough disapproval now that she subsided; her momentary irritation slipped into a sharp stab of guilt.

She was silent the rest of the ride, barely noticing Anakin's thoughtful frown after they parked within one of the lower Temple hangars beneath Processional Way. They passed through the Hanger and into the Temple proper herself, but she couldn't help peering back at the steady flow of sentients. In the hangar, civilians, Service Corps, and clones all mingled and tended to their daily duties; life had gone on for everyone else, as it always did. But then they were all out of sight and the quiet weight of the Temple itself had settled around Ahsoka as she stayed close to Anakin and Padmé.

It was odd to walk the Temple's lower levels. She hadn't stepped foot there since her days as an Initiate, and for the first time, Ahsoka took note of the war's neglect on the Temple itself: a coating of fine dust on ancient art, the web-like cracks along the stone floors, arachnids threaded high above archways. As a youngling, some of her clan's chores had included cleaning those same arches and artwork, either by hand—as discipline—or by pushing around cleaning droids with the Force—which usually led to discipline, in her case.

But now, Initiates were being pushed through their first Trials and into the war as quickly as possible. The concept of "youngling" was distinctly…flexible. There simply weren't enough of them anymore.

Even the Temple was being ground down, literally and metaphorically.

"Just be patient, Ahsoka," her Master said as they passed beneath a broad colonnade, painted and etched with countless reliefs, all of it a relic of an Order not bowed by war.

She couldn't answer.

Anakin left them in a small, bright anteroom. Ahsoka pretended not to see his shared look with Padmé before he stepped back through the arched entrance.

But before he disappeared into the shadowed hall beyond, he rested one armored arm against the stone frame and waited for Ahsoka to meet his gaze. "Just…listen to what they have to say, okay?"

And then he was gone.

* * *

Fekking hells, it was really over.

Rex wasn't a man to rely on the nebulous and capricious ambiguity of faith, but after the last hour, he'd be glad to raise a glass or several to the Force, to Jango Fett's dubious memory, or—in Ahsoka's honor—even to Shili's hundred deities.

He caught a glimpse of General Skywalker before the transparisteel doors slid shut, saw him swoop down like an overgrown Jubba bird and wrap the little Togruta in a tight hug. Another smile tugged at the corners of his mouth; it was a rare enough feeling that his whole face felt stretched and tight…but it felt _good_.

She was cleared and reinstated. They'd be off to Ringo Vinda within the next 24 hours and the war would carry on, one system, one victory at a time. The commander might need a while to recover from it all, but Ahsoka was one of the most resilient beings he'd ever met. Everything really would be back to normal.

_Kriff it all, it's about damn time._

"Captain, your clearance at these levels is questionable."

Of course, there was still Fox to deal with.

Slowly, he turned to the clone commander, nodded briefly, and made to unclip his bucket. He couldn't resist putting a pointed weight behind his response, though. "Understood, sir."

Rex didn't think it possible, but Fox bristled even further. The commander stepped closer, T-visor flashing in the corridor's stark light. "She might've been cleared of charges, but five of my men are still dead, Captain. Don't think that I'll forget what she's done."

Rex stared at Fox, thrown for a moment. Then a pulse of anger shot through him. "The charges—all charges—were dropped, Commander. If you're blaming—"

"I know what I saw, same as you, Captain."

Rex narrowed his eyes and took his own step closer to the commander. Behind him, he heard one of the red-painted Guards cough nervously. Not exactly model behavior, Captain.

He didn't care.

"I saw three troopers down, Commander," Rex countered. "Where were those other two?"

Fox pulled off his bucket, his face furious. "The comms relay, where else? Killed at their posts. They didn't even have the chance to turn around."

The comms relay? That wasn't mentioned during the trial.

Rex bit the inside of his cheek until he tasted the coppery tang of blood. Fox wasn't a fool; he'd become more of a blowhard in the years since their training under the ARC trooper, Alpha, but he made a good, hard-line commander.

Which meant he might've seen the evidence that Tarkin presented…or he might not have.

"You didn't watch the trial," Rex finally said.

Fox snorted in derision. "I have a base to run."

Rex stared at the other man's face; he didn't see any guile—just that all-too-familiar, helpless anger over lost men. But kriffing hell, he didn't have to act like a gundark had crawled up his _shebs_.

"Yeah, you do," Rex said after a moment. Against his better sense, he glanced down at his bucket and slid his gloved fingers over the black hatch marks scattered across its sides. "And I have a war to fight."

When he looked up, Fox had a vein pulsing dangerously along his forehead and his face was turning an interesting shade of maroon, close enough to match his armor's paintjob. "As do I, Captain."

Rex regarded the commander for another moment. "Commander Tano has put herself in the direct line of fire from the moment she was made an officer. She has saved more lives than I could ever count."

"Do I need to remind you, Captain, that you're the one who called the all-points bulletin?"

Rex's irritation spiked, although beneath his armor, his skin prickled with an icy heat. He would never forget the sound or sight of those cannons aimed at her tiny, green-lit form. "It. Wasn't. Her."

But Fox knew he'd hit a sore spot. Stepping even closer, the commander hissed, "You can't lie to me, Rex. You heard her, and you wondered if she _did_ do it."

The night she ran, when Skywalker had called to Ahsoka through the prison block, her voice had echoed back with a boiling determination that still rang in his ears. Her words—and the still-smoldering cuts across his brothers' bodies—had shaken him.

Just for a moment.

But that moment was enough—and Fox knew it.

The commander's eyes flashed in triumph. "You keep saying you trust them," Fox said, voice low and vehement. "But I read your reports, and I was there for the _last_ hearing Torrent was involved in."

Rex felt his jaw clench, felt his hands tighten reflexively against his bucket's rim, and couldn't keep back what he knew he shouldn't say. "You have no idea what it's like out there, Fox. Reading a 'pad and running a prison center doesn't give you_ one—fekking—clue_—what it's like out on those lines." Rex closed the last distance between them, close enough that he could smell Fox's afternoon caf on his breath. "Next time you think you know who's turned traitor—"

"May I ask," interrupted a new, but coldly familiar, voice, "what could possibly motivate two of the Republic's finest officers to argue like common street vermin?"

With a sharp breath, Rex stiffened to attention. Kark it, of course he'd be close by.

Admiral Tarkin stepped close, but not between, them.

Fox had also immediately straightened to attention, but he kept his stare directly on Rex. "Admiral, sir. A...minor disagreement, sir."

"Oh?" With a slight shift, the admiral turned to study Rex. "Regarding what, Commander?"

"The deaths of my men by the actions of Commander Tano, sir."

From the corner of his eye, Rex could see the calculating glitter in Tarkin's gaze. Silence held throughout the corridor, and by the faint rustle of fabric behind him, Rex realized they had an audience. _Shab_.

"An unfortunate loss, Commander; one I believe Captain Rex should continue to bear in mind. The true mastermind behind the Temple attack has been revealed—and I shall see that she be punished accordingly—but we should certainly learn a great deal from this...distasteful matter."

Rex unclenched his jaw just enough for a clipped, "Yes, sir."

Tarkin considered him for another moment, and his soft, "Dismissed, Captain," was more warning than order. The admiral turned away, one arm outstretched to whoever stood behind Rex. "My apologies, senators. Your speeders are waiting."

Rex slipped his bucket on and damned all protocol as he edged past three robed senators, their aides, and an entire red-painted squadron of the Coruscant Guard.

Of all the moments to leave an impression.

Fox's attitude shouldn't have goaded him—the commander wasn't faced with continuous troop losses like most other battalions were—but not once that night or while she was at large, on any of the documented footage, did she ever critically injury a trooper. He wouldn't have believed the reports of her and Ventress if he hadn't reviewed the HUD recordings himself; there hadn't been anything except bruises, dislocated shoulders and jaws, and some mangled weapons—nothing a slather of bacta and a visit to munitions couldn't cure.

Which meant...

In the privacy of a lift, Rex jerked his bucket off and scrubbed at his face with one hand, thick callouses scraping across his rough stubble. He probably looked like hell—although he'd felt like hell for the past 48 hours, until the moment Skywalker had appeared on the flatscreen at the barracks, proclaiming the real traitor.

The general had cut it too close.

Rex reached for his comm, hesitated, then dropped his hand. Fives may have contacts with an interesting level of slicing ability, but if Fives wanted to stay an ARC, he'd be debriefing with General Zey right now. Which meant a comm would be wasted.

But was a comm even..._safe_?

Rex stared down at his arm and the tech covering his vambrace; at his familiar bucket tucked into the crook of his elbow. It was as nicked and well-worn as the rest of his armor, well-shined and as optimal as it could be; the HUD as trustworthy as it ever had been_—_despite the occasional moment when he'd have liked to kick it into a pit on Mustafar, usually in the midst of one of Skywalker's "fun" missions.

Fives had mentioned a _colleague—_one who had seen more than just nothing from the missing footage—yet Rex hesitated to fully ingest that bit of intel. Anyone who could_—_and more importantly, _would—_slice into the GAR's surveillance system posed an inherent risk to Rex's men.

He _needed_ to trust the system for the best intel; the best possible tech; the best effort to keep his men alive in the heat of battle; the best chance for any of them to come out of this war on the other side.

The doors to the lift swept open and Rex hid his face behind his bucket again, once more just another armored clone wading through the harsh white light and electronic hum of the military's nerve center. He could only move with the ebb and tide of grey fatigues and the flashes of white-and-red armor, even the occasional darker matte of special ops.

He needed to get out of there.

But first, he intended to call in a favor.

* * *

An hour and a half later, the Council still hadn't called for her.

For a time, Padmé sat beside Ahsoka on a broad, threadbare settee and recounted stories from her tenure as Naboo's queen; eventually, both were lulled by the Temple's stillness.

Back between the familiar stone walls, it was hard not to take comfort from the only home Ahsoka had ever really known. For fourteen years, she'd framed her world between the Temple halls and classrooms, chasing long-lined panes of light and shadow in gardens and through wide arcades; darting between classrooms and corridors as all the vague, blurred shapes became familiar and distinct against her growing montrals.

She never slowed down; she _couldn't_. Eilosé, one of her clan-mates, once complained that she never even stopped in her sleep—as if tossing around on her little mat had been Ahsoka's fault.

She just...always wanted to see and know _more_.

It drove her instructors mad. Not that they ever showed it—they _were_ Jedi after all—but their prickle of disappointment had followed her like a trail of bread-puff crumbs.

"I'm so sorry." Padmé's quiet voice broke the silence.

For an odd, disjointed moment, Ahsoka was caught between the past and the future and another threat of tears blurred her vision. She forced herself to focus on the petite senator, who had turned from a window to study her.

Some time ago, Padmé had moved across the room to stare out at the sleek spacescrapers and blockier subsidiaries of the Coruscant skyline. She'd also removed her headdress; the metal piece sat coiled on a spindly table close by, gleaming a burnished silver in the evening light.

Its pale shine reminded Ahsoka of the promise she'd made to the silver-eyed, former Sepratist assassin. "Padmé," she began, then hesitated.

The setting sun cast shadows across the senator's face and deepened the small furrow between her brows. In that tiny moment, Padmé looked far older than she was. "Yes, Ahsoka?"

Or maybe the war was just aging everyone without pity.

Ahsoka breathed out a quick rush of air. "So Ventress...didn't betray me. Or set me up." _This is going to be hard to push past anyone. Especially Padmé._ "And I promised her something."

Padmé's delicate eyebrows drew even more sharply together. "What exactly did you promise?"

"That I would speak on her behalf to the Senate. Regarding her war crimes."

Padmé took a moment to consider Ahsoka's words, her hands idly smoothing the heavy fabric of her court-robe's skirt. Finally, she crossed the room to sit again. "That...could prove fruitless. Apart from her recent activities, Admiral Tarkin was correct. She _is_ still a wanted Separatist terrorist, as well as a murderer." She hesitated, then added, "She's killed many Jedi, and orchestrated the deaths of hundreds—if not thousands—of civilians and soldiers."

Ahsoka's gaze drifted back to the headdress and its intricate, infinite spiral. "I'm...assuming you know she saved Master Kenobi's life."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Padmé's small smile. "I have heard something along those lines, yes."

"And that Master Kenobi offered to speak for her as well?"

Padmé sighed. "Under certain conditions, I believe."

That Ventress serve the Jedi as a spy.

Ahsoka had poured over Kenobi's report repeatedly; at the time, the thought of Asajj Ventress helping any Jedi had seemed…beyond bizarre. And as hard to swallow as Darth Maul rising up from the ashes.

_But now I understand why she turned Master Kenobi down._

Ahsoka shifted on the settee to face Padmé. "Dooku used her as a tool and threw her away. She doesn't want to be used by anyone else—not even the Jedi."

Padmé considered her for a long, quiet minute, her face inscrutable; when she finally spoke, her voice was almost pitying. "Ahsoka, regardless if she wants to be beholden to anyone, there are times when reparations are necessary. She cannot truly expect you to aid her in this matter."

"But she _chose_ to help the Republic. She saved Master Kenobi's life and if she hadn't told Anakin about my comm to...to Barriss, well... Aren't those reparations?"

Padmé held her gaze, then dipped her head in acquiescence. "I will see what I can do, Ahsoka."

Ahsoka winced. "Padmé, no—I didn't mean you," she quickly said. "You've done more than enough."

But a little smile quirked at the corners of the senator's mouth. "Trust me, I'd rather be here than making another round to appeal the Privacy Invasion Act. It's become almost…embarrassingly pointless." She grimaced, then paused, her brown eyes suddenly thoughtful. "Although perhaps you'd like to take on some duties within the Senatorial District, after this is all over. If you...will have the time to spare."

Ahsoka blinked in surprise at her delicate phrasing. _She knows_. "I…"

"Our pardon," came a hesitant and apologetic voice from the anteroom's arched entrance.

Katooni, the Tholothian youngling Ahsoka had guided through her Gathering—and who had bloomed remarkably during the conflict on Florrum—stood in the doorway, along with a young, red-skinned Twi'lek.

"The Council requests your presence, Pa—Miss Tano," Katooni said, catching her slip with a respectful bow.

With a sigh, Ahsoka stood. "Here goes nothin'."

But before she could move away, Padmé grasped her hand, and when Ahsoka turned to her, the senator's gaze was sympathetic. "Remember, Ahsoka. To represent you during the trial, amnesty was necessary." She lowered her voice and briefly squeezed Ahsoka's fingers. "However you choose to move forward, Naboo—and my home—will always be welcome to you."

For the third time that day, Ahsoka's vision blurred with tears. "Thank you, Padmé."

She hoped the wealth of meaning behind those words was evident; she'd lost too much already...and within the next hour, Ahsoka knew she'd likely lose more.

Maybe Padmé was right—maybe reparations weren't enough. But what _would_ be?

Turning from the bright calm of the small room, she followed Katooni into the Temple's shadows, leaving the other youngling to guide Padmé back to the hangar and a waiting speeder.

Halfway to the Council's chamber, to her shock, Ahsoka recognized the steady swing of Padawan beads against Katooni's headdress.

The Tholothian glanced back at her, brow furrowed in concern, and Ahsoka realized she'd actually gasped out loud.

"Katooni, when did you become a Padawan?"

The girl blushed, brown skin burnishing a deep bronze as she reached back to finger the beads. "Two nights ago. Master Yoda believes I am ready."

She fell back to walk beside Ahsoka, a shy but proud smile lighting up her face. "I will join Knight S'cylani and Master Ki-Adi-Mundi in the Outer Rim Territories...so I...might eventually fight alongside you again."

At Ahsoka's silence, Katooni continued, "It isn't the usual way, as Master Yoda said, but he also said that…" Her brow crinkled as she attempted to quote—or at least paraphrase—the Grand Master, "...these grave times call for a way beyond that of old." Katooni's voice turned rueful. "Which I guess means that the rest of my classes will be on the _Gallant_. But…I _do_ think I'm ready." Her smile was bright, hopeful, and something twisted sharply inside Ahsoka as she stared at the girl.

Part of her brain refused to fully comprehend Katooni's words. Some of her horror must have shown through, because Katooni's smile faltered and she dropped her gaze.

"Katooni," Ahsoka finally managed. "How old are you?"

The girl slid the Padawan beads between her slender fingers; they were silka, like Ahsoka's, in keeping with Tholothian traditions. "In five standard months, I'll be thirteen."

Ahsoka's throat tightened painfully. She couldn't think of an adequate response.

Silence followed them to the High Council Chamber's arched foyer; Katooni turned to leave with only a murmur and a bow.

But Ahsoka called after her. "Katooni."

The Padawan looked up, blue eyes dark with apprehension.

"May the Force be with you," Ahsoka heard herself saying.

The girl's shy smile reappeared. "And also with you, Ahsoka."


	4. Chapter 3

**A/N**: Please note this chapter occurs concurrently with the last chapter. Best laid plans and all that...

* * *

"What you're suggesting would open up dangerous possibilities, and we must not train terrorists."

"Eh, rebels."

"How we conduct war is what distinguishes us from others."

-Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi to Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker

* * *

An hour and a half after Barris Offee had renounced the Jedi Order and well into the Padawan's subsequent sentencing, Obi-Wan realized—with a bleary sort of horror—that he would've far preferred the wastelands of some wretched Outer Rim battlefield to his appointed stand above the Chamber of Judgment.

"We lost this war long before it ever began, when we dared—as Jedi!—to create an army of slaves for our purposes!"

He'd thought—perhaps foolishly—the sentencing would've been a relatively simple matter: a repeat of the confession and then Barriss would be hovercarted off to prison and afterwards, the Council—with all the wisdom granted by hindsight—could carry on with making this entire Weequay-cantina-brawl fiasco into something justifiable, yes?

Apparently not.

"And you dared set this path for us all, under a banner of freedom and justice, and preach that we are mere defenders of peace; that we should stand in the way of the dark so the light might shine; that the Separatists leave nothing but chaos and terror and that nothing should dare sunder this Republic—"

Barriss' skin had flushed a deep, mottled olive beneath the chamber's cold light, her face covered in a fine sheen of sweat. So far, she'd run the list of grievances all the way from underpaid civilians to overpaid corporations, starving refugees to conflicts of interest at the heart of the Senate's dealings—as if the High Council hadn't been aware of any of those things—and her diatribe still continued.

"You would spare us so-called soldiers the truth of the matter, that this war has only carried on at the behest of the vast seeds of corruption and borne on the shoulders of this Council—"

It didn't help Obi-Wan's frame of mind one bit that a throbbing ache had settled at the back of his skull, strong enough that he'd actually given in and tried to disperse it with a little pulse of the Force. In sublime irony, even the fabric of the universe was now being as obstinate as his fellow Council members. His headache pounded on.

"—but we are the ones who have left nothing but shadows in our wake; nothing but destruction and fear!"

His gaze slid to the dais' gridded screen and each cluster of glowing symbols that registered the Masters' decisions. Windu's was conspicuously blank, but rather than moving the whole affair forward without his vote—as they had over Obi-Wan's abstention, regarding Ahsoka—the proceeding carried on.

For a brief moment, Obi-Wan wondered if Windu had finally spent too much time in the Supreme Chancellor's presence. The Senate's most infamous characteristics—such as a complete lack of logic or the ability to expedite anything in a timely manner—certainly seemed to have rubbed off on him.

…Although the GAR's hyperspeed treatment of Ahsoka's case had certainly been an eye-smarting experience in cutting through the bureaucratic red flimsitape.

Anakin had barely made it to the tribunal chamber in time; the thought of just how quickly—and likely—the GAR would've dispensed with its newly-favored brand of justice left Obi-Wan's mouth dry and sent another stab of pain through his temples.

His former Padawan now waited as a witness on the chamber floor, shifting from foot to foot—restless as a caged katarn—next to the holographic image of Master Unduli. While Luminara seemed to bear Barriss' fury with a quiet sort of grace, Anakin seethed, and at one point—when Barriss had decided to implicate the Order's collusion with slavers—his Force-signature spiked alarmingly. Admirably—and perhaps miraculously—Anakin had kept his silence.

"—you preach that we are mere defenders of peace while you sweep the true effects of war behind you, caring nothing for the innocents that you so easily ignore—"

Now _that_ was enough.

"Funny you should mention the innocents," Obi-Wan interrupted, pitching his voice over hers as she tried to carry on, "considering an innocent was on trial for _your_ crimes. An innocent who, as it happens, has saved your very life. Multiple times, I believe."

Obi-Wan managed to become completely blind to Windu's glare from across the chamber; whatever the Korun Master had been trying to extract from Barriss' vitriol, it was far past time to be moving things along.

_And they call _me_ the patient one._

"To believe any one of us is innocent is to believe a lie—"

"Younglings, then? Or perhaps the crechélings? Shall the military courts put them on trial before or after they're able to lift a training saber?"

"They shouldn't have to lift one at all!" And, to Obi-Wan's surprise, her voice broke on that last, strident syllable.

That...was certainly an interesting response. His hand jumped automatically to his beard, thoughts darting back to her earlier arguments.

But Master Mundi was also done waiting and picked up where Obi-Wan left off. "You truly believe all these things, that you'd rather not have ever begun your training as a Jedi; that nothing good could ever come from this Order?"

Barriss' chest rose and fell and her eyes glittered under the chamber's light. "Nothing."

Below her, standing mute and as insubstantial as a shadow, flickered the blue image of Master Unduli; she seemed to bow beneath the weight of her Padawan's bitterness.

"None of us should ever have led this so-called Republic into any war," Barriss spat with all the rage of a Kaleesh warlord, although her next words lacked the same amount of acidic fervor. "And if that means none of us should ever have walked the halls of this Temple...then yes, we should all stand trial, rather than allow what...what has come to pass."

It was an abrupt enough change that an expectant silence held throughout the chamber. Obi-Wan couldn't resist glancing at his fellow Masters, although Windu remained unmoved at his stand; the chamber's shadows hid all but the gleam of his eyes. The Master was still playing at something, but what?

Plo Koon broke the stillness. "If it is your belief that the Jedi teachings have brought on this war, why was your choice a matter of terror over peace?"

Her expression had slipped into something akin to a grim desperation during the silence, but as Master Plo spoke, her face hardened. "It is no longer a matter of peace. My recourse could only be what this Order knows—an act of violence for a people of violence!"

"You act," Windu finally stated, "as a Sith."

Ah, the heart of it.

Barriss' eyes blazed, blue fire in the fierce light. "I act as I believe—that this Order could see—"

"Yet you would allow someone who trusted you, who claimed you as a friend, to be executed so you could carry on?" Obi-Wan couldn't quite keep the disgust out of his voice. "You speak as a martyr, but lack the conviction."

The flame seemed to sputter and a flood of emotions swept across her face, all too quick to define.

"Your beliefs—" Windu began, but she cut across him.

"It is not simply a matter of belief! All you must do is open your eyes, as I have, to see what this Order has become—"

"Lost." At the gravelly, exhausted voice of the Grand Master, all eyes turned; with a jolt of surprise, Obi-Wan realized he had not heard Yoda speak since before Ahsoka's military trial began. It was a bit like an electroshock to hear him now.

"Yes, lost," Barriss hissed, eyes narrowed and glistening. "Every one of you, guided only by a love of bloodshed—"

"Lost, we are? Or only you, our child, we have lost?" Yoda again broke in, his weary voice gentled by a familiar tone Obi-Wan recognized from years spent within the Temple's classrooms. Yoda's patience and particular joy in teaching younglings had been noted in historical texts for hundreds of years; ironic, perhaps, that the historians might've passed on, but the wizened Master had carried ever forward, gimer stick in-hand.

Yet this was no youngling in need of a lesson.

Irritation shot through Obi-Wan before he could temper and sweep the emotion away into the Force's ebbing tide. Ahsoka had more than earned that same patience when she'd stood before them and pleaded her innocence. Why had it been so lacking then?

"Clouded our minds, the dark side has," the Grand Master said. Obi-Wan nearly snorted. _Truer words..._ But Yoda went on, and Obi-Wan chastised himself for his own lack of faith. "Blood, so much blood, shed for you, or by you, for many. Upon our own hearts, these stains of blood, yes. And upon yours, as well; so deep, unseen, perhaps they are, hm? Too great to bear, this darkness, alone, yes?"

Barriss seemed to have finally run out of words. A bit of that same desperation Obi-Wan had glimpsed earlier slipped back onto her face; sweat beaded across her brow and slid down her temples as her chest heaved, her breath loud through the chamber, her focus shifting from Master to Master.

Silence again stretched between Padawan and Masters, although this time it was taunt and thick as the massive durasteel riggings that anchored all of the great Star Destroyers in their Coruscanti berths. Finally, she spoke, her words hitched and halting. "I _know_ the path of the Jedi no longer leads to peace, and we will all fall, if we continue."

The words thrummed with the finality of a Force-born truth, and Obi-Wan swallowed against the weight that settled low in his throat. He knew he wasn't the only one to feel it; a ripple of movement spread even to Windu, and from the corner of his eye, he noted the shift of shadows over the Master's face. At last, another small line of Aurebesh appeared on Obi-Wan's dais-screen.

"Barriss Offee," Windu said, his voice ringing with a familiar strength through the Chamber, "you confess to have directly and indirectly taken the lives of civilians, clones, and your fellow Jedi in acts of sedition, terrorism, and murder. With your confession, you also admit to tampering and altering this Republic's military and civilian records and evidence, sabotaging the ongoing investigations and efforts by the Jedi Order and the Grand Army of the Republic.

"With these acts, you have broken all vows made as a member of this Order and as a guardian and defender of the Republic and its people. It is the Council's decision that you will be stripped of your status and rights as a Jedi, and will submit to a life of imprisonment for your crimes."

Below, Barriss' defiance only renewed at Windu's words. She drew herself up into a proud, arrogant image that reminded Obi-Wan forcibly of Ventress.

He forced himself _not _to raise his hand to his beard at the thought_. __Had_ Ventress been part of this whole, disgraceful mess? It was hard to believe; there hadn't been any murmur of credits changing hands after the attack—or so stated Republic Intelligence—but Ventress was exceedingly resourceful. If she wanted to work for bounties on either side of the war, she would manage quite capably—even if that meant slipping beneath her former Master's very nose.

"I stand accused. But you will know the truth of my words when this Republic falls, and in the centuries to come, you will stand accused for allowing this Order to fail!"

The echo of her words rang through the chamber as the Judgment pier lowered and the Temple guards led Barriss away, her dark-robed form almost unseen behind the yellow glow of their saberpikes. Obi-Wan gave in to the urge and thoughtfully stroked his beard. Silence held for another long moment.

"Long," Yoda finally said, "proven the fall has, Master Unduli, for your Padawan." The little green Grand Master leaned forward, the tips of his ears drooping in a manner that Obi-Wan had come to recognize as a sign of fatigue. "No sign, given she had, for such thoughts, such anger?"

Luminara's head had remained bowed as the guards led Barriss away, but now she straightened to meet Yoda's gaze. "No, Master Yoda. I sensed nothing. Her training has proven so exemplary within the Healing arts that she has remained on Coruscant these past months, and in our conversations and meditations together, she gave no sign of any discontent." The Mirilian paused, folding her hands together before the thick fabric of her robes; the hologram sputtered as if it, too, was uncertain. "Barriss…has always been adept in clearing her mind of all emotion. Perhaps…she simply concealed, rather than released. I…I do not know."

Another beat of silence followed Luminara's words before Windu spoke. "Tell us, Skywalker, the manner in which you discovered this treachery."

Anakin stepped forward, almost eagerly, out of the half-shadows and into the cold light cast down on the Judgment pier's berth.

"As my Padawan had stated to this Council—" He paused only long enough to incline his head respectfully towards the Masters; in another situation, Obi-Wan might've rolled his eyes. For all that Anakin preferred the front lines, the young man had certainly become a forceful orator—which wasn't altogether surprising, given his temperament and Senator Amidala's...influence. "—Ahsoka had formed a mutual understanding with Asajj Ventress. I sought her out and found her in the lower levels. We know that Ventress' motives have aligned with the Republic in recent months, and while her reasons for aiding Ahsoka are her own, she indicated that she was attacked—just as Ahsoka was.

"Ventress also indicated that the attacker stole her lightsabers." Anakin spread his hands in a shrug that was anything but humble. "This, and the fact that Barriss was the only one Ahsoka contacted after her escape from the prison center, led me to the truth of the matter. Barriss made no effort to hide the fact that she had Ventress' lightsabers, and as the Temple guards witnessed, she was willing to attack or flee in order to escape prosecution."

Ah, so Ventress hadn't been a willing participant, or at least by appearances didn't seem to be. An interesting thought; however— _Laying it on a bit thick, Anakin._ Oratory skills or no, he didn't need to—

"From the guards' reports, I'm to understand that her confession was brought about by a rather extreme use of force."

—antagonize Windu.

Anakin visibly bristled. "I acted as I saw fit to expose the real traitor to the Order—and it worked." He stepped further into the chamber's fierce light, expression hardening into a familiar heat of righteous determination. "This entire incident should never have happened, and my Padawan should never have been—"

"We cannot change the past, Skywalker." Windu's voice held a cutting finality to it, and to Obi-Wan's surprise, Anakin subsided. But not without a telling glare. "Yet we are still left with questions that I do not believe we will find adequate answers for."

Plo Koon took a step back from his dais. It was clear the Kel Dor had no intention of staying in the Chamber any longer than necessary. "Perhaps these questions may be addressed after we have righted a particular wrong."

Obi-Wan agreed wholeheartedly. "Yes. I believe another victim of this ordeal is waiting for our apologies."

Obi-Wan wasn't surprised at the grumble of assent from below, nor the piercing look from Windu. This time, he allowed himself a sigh.

Some things would never change.

* * *

A gray-fatigued clone lieutenant let out a low whistle as he approached Rex from a side corridor. "Nice kit. Your own mods?"

The corners of his mouth twitched and Rex angled the bucket in his hands to show the solder seaming. "Can't get any better. Good to see you, Bolo."

"Same, brother." The other clone clasped Rex's shoulder bell, his one remaining eye meeting Rex's gaze evenly before he turned and indicated the maze of corridors beyond them. A tinny whir of servos followed the lieutenant as he started forward, audible over the thud of their boots against durasteel. The Second Battle of Geonosis had left Bolo sans left eye and left leg, although from what Rex remembered of the damage, it was a miracle he still had both arms."Deeces, too?"

Rex snorted. "Naturally."

"Long way from our first set."

"I know what they say about the Phase II, but I swear they started diluting the mix. Cheap bastards."

Bolo jerked his chin toward the gleaming passageway ahead of them; it stretched on endlessly, it seemed, with side corridors and broader junctures placed at regular intervals. Some areas were marked with typical office doors, complete with opaque plesglass, all unmarked; others were fitted with thick durasteel ribbing, and Rex didn't bother trying to guess what could be behind the wide, solid doors set at the middle of those sections. There was a distinct metallic taint to the air that reminded him of the _Resolute_ back on its inaugural run, complete with newly welded durasteel and an oil coat so fresh it would've made a mynock purr.

"Credits for this place had to come from somewhere, eh? A little skim off the top of this budget, that budget—and look there, a shiny new GARCIC."

Which was likely true. The military's new criminal investigation center had only been one little tick off the GAR's long want list, but these days, what the GAR wanted, the GAR got—regardless of budgets. _Getting as greedy as a Geelan._

"Explains a lot," muttered Rex. "I don't wanna know what else got repurposed to get a place this size."

They were passing along a sterile stretch that reminded Rex uncomfortably of Kamino's endless white walls, broken only by the universally GAR-gray durasteel plating above and below. In just getting down to the CIC's level, Rex's fight or flight instinct had started humming after the first few minutes of endless, mostly empty hallways. He hated not knowing the territory—even if that territory happened to be the bowels of the GAR's latest expanded facilities.

If Bolo hadn't been his only remaining vat brother—and if Rex hadn't specifically requested his presence—Rex would've retreated back beneath his bucket and pulled up a map.

"They like it big 'round here," Bolo agreed. "Just finished it. They haven't even slotted the 'lifts yet—which means a long walk for us." His lopsided grin flashed for a moment before he indicated a side corridor. Several neat Aurebesh placards were set high along the intersection. "That way to the new lab."

"Lab?"

"Crime lab."

Rex fought the urge to glance back like some nuna-headed tourist as they passed by the intersection. "They need a lab?"

"For forensics, research, and the like." Bolo's remaining eyebrow quirked up at Rex's pointed look. "Not quite the rock jumper I used to be, eh?"

"Just as long as you don't start preferring greenputt over limmie. Then I'd worry."

Bolo's bark of laughter echoed down the empty corridors. "I'd shame my own name, eh?"

Rex gave a noncommittal shrug, although he could feel a tug at the corner of his mouth. "Even out on the Rim, I hear funny things about you Corrie-based troopers."

"Let me guess. Sweetcrust nerf steak, medium rare, with ahh—glockaw sauce and muja fruit?"

Rex chuckled. "Thire will never live that down."

Bolo snorted another laugh and shook his head.

They walked on in companionable quiet for a moment before Rex voiced the thought prodding insistently at the back of his mind. "Why an investigation center?" There was another beat of silence, and Rex noticed Bolo's assessing sidelong look. Rex rolled his eyes. "Alright, give."

"Word here is the war ain't goin' so well—"

Rex, to his own irritation, couldn't deny that particular fact. _Doing about as good as a Gungan on a nexu hunt_.

"—and they're pushin' for a more...cohesive effort."

Which apparently translated to a drastically expanded special ops sector.

But still… "There's a reason General Skywalker tells 'em every rotation to stuff their latest 'improved gear' back up their exhaust ports. What's this really gonna do for the war?"

His first comment earned a laugh as the lieutenant slid a card through an access-panel and led Rex into another series of corridors, these only a uniform gray. "At least it makes a place for half-canned wets like me to be dropped into. I'd rather be here than a white tube to nowhere back on Kamino."

There was an underlying edge of bitterness to Bolo's voice that Rex knew he couldn't acknowledge beyond a grunt of assent. No brother wanted either pity or sympathy for the scars they bore.

They walked in silence for a minute; part of Rex's mind ticked off the number of doorways, while another part mentally calculated how far this particular facility webbed out beneath the GAR's surface buildings. And another part wondered at the fact that Bolo hadn't answered his question.

"Is he as crazy as they say?" Bolo finally asked.

Rex glanced at him, brow furrowed. "What?"

"Skywalker."

Rex halted at another corridor juncture; when Bolo looked back and took note of his expression, the lieutenant held up his hands innocently. "Just what I hear 'round here, Rex. Don't scratch my paint."

"'_Crazy'_ got me and my men out of more sarlacc pits than I want to remember, even when all Nine Hells were raining down on us. He might not follow every reg, but he gets the job done. Better than any other I've ever served under."

"Fair enough."

"More than fair. He's a good man." Rex shook his head in disbelief. "Where you getting this stuff?"

"Lots of talk over the past few days," the lieutenant admitted with a flash of another grin, twisted by scar tissue, "especially over why his Padawan would turn—"

Rex drew in a hissing breath. "She _didn't_ turn—"

"Easy, Rex—I know." But the other clone took a step back, anyway. "I don't cart around a HUD anymore, but I can still read the consoles."

Rex shook his head as he started forward again, so quickly that the servos in Bolo's leg whined in protest when the clone lieutenant had to jog after him. Rex could feel his brother's gaze on him, could see his eyebrow ticked up in thought, but he apparently decided to drop the subject and they continued on. Finally, Bolo stopped within the expanse of a higher, broader hall, neatly lined with durasteel bay doors, each gleaming in their frames.

"You'll have to bunk a moment here, Rex." With a wink of his eye, Bolo stepped close to the nearest bay; a series of scans and a hiss of hydraulics later, the lieutenant had disappeared into its gaping maw and the bay door had closed again.

The thrum of machinery here had a weight and density to it that pressed on Rex's ears and set his instincts on edge. According to the chrono, over an hour and a half had passed since Ahsoka's charges were cleared, and while Rex was accustomed to the slow-grinding gears of the GAR's inner workings, his comm to Yularen had been met with a quick acceptance but an hour's worth of wait for clearance. Regardless, at least he could do this one, small act for his commander.

But the depths of the GAR's HQ unnerved him in a way that he still wasn't sure he wanted to acknowledge. He shifted from one foot to the other and suddenly wished he could be off Coruscant and back shipside, roaming familiar corridors filled with familiar armor. He'd even take some Rimmer planet with nothing more than dirt and rocks and plants that might bite when touched—but it would all still seem more normal than densely-packed expanse of the ecumenopolis itself.

It was odd to think of a brother like Bolo sitting, content, under the vast beast of GAR HQ—even odder to think of him as something like a cleric.

Not just odd. Bizarre.

As cadets, he'd had a companionable—but not particularly close—relationship with his vat brothers. It was one thing to grow up on Kamino within a single squad; quite another to be anything other than a training group throughout the endless, grueling days. Rex had always wanted to push forward, wanted to fight and lead and think, wanted to see how far he could climb up the grand hierarchy of the budding military.

That had changed from one breath to another beneath Skywalker. Even now, through each hellish battlefield, he didn't want to be anything but captain to Torrent and constant six to his commander and general.

But Bolo had always been happy to be a grunt, happy to be pointed in a direction and told to shoot—and if there hadn't been anything to shoot at, he'd be even happier spouting all things limmie.

Rex almost snorted at the memory. Bolo had been one of the first to discover the wonders of the beautiful game—probably one of the first clones to gain a _true_ name, thanks to his intensely vocal obsession—and the last time Rex had seen him, seamed in 212th orange on Geonosis, he'd been rattling off the entirety of the Galactic Cup's lineup and stats like he'd been flash-trained with it.

If Rex believed the chatter, Bolo had woken from his dip in bacta more upset over missing the Fwillsving-Kubindi cup match than losing his leg.

A hum, then a hiss, and the one-eyed clone appeared through the durasteel bay door, a slender metal box in his hands. It's dull surface reflected the stark white glowrod-light overhead.

"Per the admiral's call," he said, presenting the box to Rex. "Yularen already sent his codes for evidence discharge. Just need you to scan your chip here."

Rex didn't argue and was just grateful that Bolo happened to be the head evidence custodian, rather than some unknown Coruscant Guard. He bared his wrist and passed his implanted ID tag over the smooth black reader along the box's front. A small blip, another swipe of Bolo's access card, and the box hissed open to reveal two familiar, smudged, grime-and-carbon-encrusted objects.

His heart leapt and his stomach sank at the same time, tangling into something that lodged his throat as he reached in and withdrew Ahsoka's lightsabers. Seeing them within the sterility of the evidence container, as if they were some sort of discarded, forgotten relic, was as bizarre and..._wrong_ as a dirt-pounding trooper turned benign cleric.

But in his hands, the lightsabers were oddly heavy and seemed to pulse briefly with a life and warmth of their own.

Bolo gave him an assessing look as Rex clipped them to his belt. "I hear about you, y'know."

Rex lifted a brow.

"Captain of Torrent—pretty much impossible _not_ to hear about you."

Rex might've imagined it, but he thought he heard the faintest echo of envy. No, that was bitterness in Bolo's voice; not as much as earlier, when he'd mentioned his permanent leave from the front lines, but it was still there. "Bolo, if you really want to get back out there, just let m—"

Bolo immediately waved him off and motioned for the far corridor, as if to hurry Rex on his way and out of his assigned domain. "Don't say it. I'd be just another easy target out there. As long as I'm not gettin' a blue hypo in the arm from some long-neck, 'm good."

Rex studied the other clone and recognized the weight that seemed to settle hardest across the shoulders of the most severely wounded survivors. There was a flimsi texture to his unscarred skin, a paleness that Rex usually associated with non-clone bridge personnel who'd been away too long from the warmth of any sun.

"The offer stands, Bolo."

One side of the lieutenant's mouth twisted in a wry smile. "Thanks, Rex. Watch yourself out there."

Rex saluted his brother, and if Bolo's salute was a tad lazy in return, Rex didn't mind. Bolo had paid his pounds of flesh to the war and to the rest of them.

But as Rex moved to turn away, all-too-ready to leave the base behind and return the lightsabers to their rightful owner, Bolo spoke again.

"Y'know, that Jedi who turned—she's the reason I still have my arm." Rex hesitated, watched carefully as Bolo clenched and unclenched his left hand, face drawn and pensive. "She was in that medbay after Geonosis, and they couldn't do anything about my leg or my eye—but she—she thought she could save my arm. And she did."

A stuttered wave of confusion and pain passed over the clone's broken face and Rex wondered—not for the first or second or third time—how any of them would survive this war. Not with their heads fully intact.

"Funny, ain't it?" Bolo murmured, in a voice that was equal parts haunted and befuddled.

No. It wasn't funny at all.

* * *

**A/N**: The series' decision regarding Barriss was...interesting, to put it simply. She certainly deserved more screen time, if she were to take that fall...which I could only hope would've found some other ground in seasons we didn't see. But that's what fanfiction is for, right?


	5. Chapter 4

**A/N**: Many thanks to **impoeia**, a beta deserving of an endless supply of cookies, and thank you to all who are reading this little beast of a fic!

* * *

"They're asking you back, Ahsoka. _I'm _asking you back."

-Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker

* * *

Beneath the sweeping arches and clean stone of the High Council's chamber, the clarity of the moment hit with a brutal intensity.

Could she really do this?

"Miss Tano," Master Windu began, with a particular tone that brooked no possible argument, "I'm sure you will understand. We must ask certain questions of you."

Of course. They were Jedi—guardians, sentinels, investigators, negotiators. Questions _had _to be asked, truths discovered, the weak protected, ironies ignored.

Funny that she'd spent her life training for what she thought the Jedi stood for, and it all came down to nothing more than an awkward silence and a question about her choice in friends.

Six of the Masters stood in a rough semicircle in front of her, their robes tinted gold by the light of the sun. Facing them again left an odd ache in her chest, like a durasteel band around her lungs, choking off any chance for the detachment she so desperately wanted in that moment.

Barriss had asked her outright about emotion—if it would ever be right or wrong to ignore something so intrinsic to both their species' natures. No matter how much Ahsoka wanted to lock it all away, that one odd question trickled through her mind and refused to leave.

"Had you been in communication with Padawan Offee prior to this incident?"

Could she _really_ do this?

Ahsoka closed her eyes and the Masters' faces disappeared into a wash of red-orange behind her eyelids. She could feel the warmth of the setting sun through the high, arching windows, but it didn't sink any further into her skin than a brush of paint over plesglass.

The Force, though, prickled along her senses. It _waited_ for something. A drawn breath; an expectant silence.

"We comm'd weekly."

For a time, anyways. In the months after Geonosis and the brain worms, she'd enjoyed those comms; Barriss had a dry humor that Ahsoka always liked to draw out. Their conversations were short—there was always something to call one of them away—but Ahsoka had relished the contact with another Padawan. Being Anakin's student was never easy.

"Weekly?" Master Plo Koon's voice had a pointed weight behind it and she opened her eyes to look up at the Kel Dor, the Master she'd always turned to as a youngling, even when he encouraged her to search for her own answers.

"Not lately," she amended. She'd been too busy in recent months and in the Outer Rim, comm lines to Coruscant were unreliable at best. Most communication had been limited to official channels.

She _did_ know, however, that Barriss had transferred back to the Temple to continue her studies in the Healing arts. Barriss had been excited—as excited as she ever _could_ be—about the opportunity. She'd also confided to Ahsoka that she far preferred a posting away from the front lines.

"_Do you ever consider what the end of the war will __be like?"_ Barriss had asked._ "The__ recovery efforts alone will be truly monumental._"

Ahsoka's mind had still been reeling from the decidedly atypical mission on Onderon and could only answer honestly. _"Is any war really over?"_

"Ahsoka." Anakin's voice pulled her back to the Council Chamber. "When _was_ your last comm?"

"Three months ago."

"And what was it in reference to?" Master Ki-Adi-Mundi asked.

"Her transfer back to the Temple," she answered, although Master Mundi's clear inflection only brought to mind Katooni's silka Padawan beads, swinging a steady tempo against the girl's headdress.

According to the last briefing she'd read, standing at Anakin's side in the War Council room, Master Mundi's legion was preparing to take on a Separatist blockade at Mygeeto. _"This is a cleverly held system,_" the Cerean Master had said, although a communique from Admiral Tarkin made mention of the weaknesses in the Separatist defenses and pressed for a quick victory. _"I doubt a long-standing hold_ _will prove so easy to come by."_

How could they think Katooni was ready for that? She'd only just made her lightsaber; a few months of lessons under old Tera Sinube wouldn't amount to much in the Outer Rim. The thought of the little Tholothian—soft-spoken and unsure, yet still determined to learn and to keep trying—out at the front of a battle sent a sick swoop through her stomach.

"Did she give you any reason to believe she was dissatisfied with the Order?"

_Would it have mattered?_

"No."

"Had Offee made mention of any acquaintances on Coruscant?"

Ahsoka furrowed her brow at the question. Then—_ah_. Some sort of outside influence. But she doubted Letta could've been anything other than a convenient pawn. Watching Steela at the head of her rebels, Ahsoka knew the kind of personality needed to rouse a people for any kind of cause. It took guts, brains, _and _charisma. "No."

"And you have no reason to believe she would have targeted you, otherwise?"

The question came from Master Windu; his voice was clipped and precise and the weight of it resonated through her montrals.

_Why Barris?_

Could it have been _anyone_ else?

"No."

That, itself, hit harder than any saber strike. It had been _easy_ to blame Ventress; she was never really a Jedi, despite some of the things Master Kenobi had mentioned of her.

For nearly a thousand years, the Temple's echoing halls had been filled with the sound of soft-soled footsteps and the brush of familiar brown robes. Tens of thousands—maybe hundreds of thousands—had walked those corridors and left their imprint with the hum of training sabers and pulse of the Force, all of it signifying the movement of an Order she'd trusted wholly and unreservedly since her first warm impressions of safety and peace, held close in the arms of Master Plo.

Why did that all seem so trivial now, fitted against a reality where one of her closest friends wanted her dead?

The Masters stood in silence, as if waiting for her to expand on her answer—_any_ of her answers.

But there was nothing she _could_ say to them.

"Former Padawan Barriss Offee," Master Windu finally said, "has been sentenced to life in imprisonment for her actions against you, the Order, and the Republic. We know that she will not have any bearing on your actions, going forward."

Succinctly put, they weren't blaming Ahsoka. She felt her face tighten and she had to drop her gaze to the cut stone. Anakin, at least, seemed to realize the misstep.

"Ahsoka, I am so sorry. About everything."

_Me, too, Skyguy._

All her life, she'd followed her instincts and known they were right; from her studies and training beneath the instructors, to the plains of Shili and her solo hunt for the akul. And every time, she'd felt—and tempered—that surge of pride; in the classroom, the training halls and even while stringing the akul teeth together before the light of a campfire.

Then Ilum, and her lightsaber.

And then to Anakin's side—and into battle.

"You have our most humble apologies, little 'Soka."

_But could I ever really go back to any of that?_

"The Council was wrong to accuse you."

Yes, they were. And yes, she could.

Although even now the residue of their _intent_ hung in the air, heavy in her lungs. It was like the protesters and the remnant of their anger; it stained the Temple's steps like blood and she wondered if it would ever wash away.

"You have shown such great strength and resilience in your struggle to prove your innocence."

An odd shiver ran through her; a void that felt like the Force-block binders were still strapped across her wrists; an ache left by the fight in a war she no longer understood.

But had she ever?

"This is a true sign of a Jedi."

Something clenched inside Ahsoka's stomach, hard and acrid and unforgiving, and around her, the Force _breathed_.

"This was actually your great Trial. Now we see that."

What if Bariss was right?

"We understand that the Force works in mysterious ways, and because of this Trial, you have become a greater Jedi than you would have, otherwise."

She'd fought for years, led countless men to their deaths, faced pain and horror and terror, all to defend the Republic…

"Back into the Order, you may come."

But what if it wasn't that simple?

* * *

It was over with one simple, quiet statement.

"I'm sorry, Master, but I'm not coming back."

It wasn't any more than Obi-Wan had half-expected. But the reality—and the whip-like backlash of Anakin's mind, first as a stumbling, broken echo, then as a blinding flare of hurt and confusion—hit with all the crackling, numbing pain of an electrostaff blow.

He'd known, somehow, even before Anakin turned and offered the silka beads to her; even as he felt the hope and pride threading through Anakin's mind like a dawning light across Umbara's darkness.

And with the same resolve she'd borne throughout it all, Obi-Wan watched Ahsoka turn and leave the Order.

A gravity well of focused pain hunched Obi-Wan forward instinctively; Anakin—not but two steps away from him—narrowed to a dark pinprick in the Force, as if the beast of the young man's strength was felled for an infinite breath, too staggered to react.

And then he was gone, too.

The firm, clawed grip of Plo Koon's hand rested heavily on Obi-Wan's shoulder before he realized he'd moved to follow after.

"We cannot allow this." The words slipped out of Obi-Wan's mouth without conscious thought.

"She has chosen her path." Master Plo's voice was detached, as though the Kel Dor had mentally retreated; perhaps off into Wild Space, where foolish old Masters weren't destroying their own students with doubt and fear. A prickle of regret flowed from Plo Koon and it was an odd enough sensation that Obi-Wan turned to face the other Master.

Master Plo never loosened his tight control over his abilities or emotions; Obi-Wan had always rather admired him for that, especially in the years prior to Obi-Wan's Mastery, when a younger Anakin had left Obi-Wan wondering if the little smart-mouthed prodigy would be the demise of the Order, rather than its savior.

But that smooth well of mental peace now rippled with disquiet.

As Obi-Wan studied Plo's bowed head, Ki-Adi-Mundi spoke. "There is nothing more we can offer her."

A flash of anger shot through Obi-Wan, and even though he quelled it—he had not faced Grievous or Dooku or even _Maul_ to allow his own brethren to break his control—he allowed impatience to color his words. "I believe there is quite enough that this Council can do for one who has been so wronged, and we would be remiss not to make every attempt in repairing a trust we destroyed."

"Be at peace, Master Kenobi." Windu's tone was wooden, but with an edge Obi-Wan stiffened at.

"Peace? As I recall, we are currently at war."

"_Master Kenobi_—"

But Windu was cut off by the solid thunk of a gimer stick. "Make undone, we cannot, this betrayal of trust," Master Yoda interjected, the weight and weariness of his voice somehow more unsettling than even Anakin's faltering Force-signature. "Escape, we cannot, this pain of war."

The Grand Master turned to face Obi-Wan, his wrinkled face drawn and pinched in a way that sent a current through the Council, cold as Hoth's constant, cutting winds. "Offer peace, you would, Master Kenobi?"

Obi-Wan inclined his head gratefully to the Grand Master. "Might I remind the Council that I also left the Order as a Padawan." He couldn't bring himself to meet Windu's piercing gaze; his defiance of Qui-Gon Jinn and of the Council had been a memorable experience, to say the least, but as a very young—and very insistent—student, he'd been determined to aid in Melida/Daan's ongoing civil war. He didn't regret his decision, although regaining Master Jinn's trust had proven the most difficult trial of his younger self.

Which had been overshadowed by the realities of _this_ war, faced as a man.

"And I returned to the Order with this Council's blessing. Might I recommend a similar patience now?"

"A very different situation, Master Kenobi," Windu noted. Obi-Wan had to force back a few choice words.

"Ahsoka is not one who would lightly bear the charity of another." Plo Koon, at least, seemed to understand where Obi-Wan was headed. Master Yoda, as well; his gaze was sharp and knowing.

"It is not simply a matter of whether she accepts an act of charity or not."

"Master Kenobi," Yoda said simply.

Obi-Wan, chastened, tucked his hands into his robes and bowed slightly to the diminutive Grand Master. "All I ask is time, patience, and the means for her to understand her own path."

Yoda considered Obi-Wan before inclining his head. "Agree, I do. As you see fit, I trust, arrange these matters."

Obi-Wan bowed again, gratitude pooling like a balm in his chest. Perhaps...

But Yoda wasn't finished, and as much as the Grand Master's words gave Obi-Wan a quiet sort of relief, they unnerved him with a stinging, inescapable implication.

"Failed we have, our lost students. Trust the Force we must, to guide their paths, as we have not. Lost to the dark side, another, we cannot allow."

* * *

It took Rex ten minutes to wade through the base's constant river of troops and vehicles before he managed to commandeer an idling one-seat speeder bike and slip away. Gliding through the checkpoints and massive perimeter wall with barely a nod to the red-painted troopers stationed there, he'd never been so glad to leave the base behind and flow into the chaos of the civilian side.

With a a quick tap of his fingers, he disabled the bike's autocontrol safeties and revved the 74-Z into a skylane. Coruscant's gleaming transparisteel may not have been the comforting familiarity of a Star Destroyer's corridors, but after threading his way through the GAR's central command again—and making a point of clipping Ahsoka's lightsabers beneath his _kama_ before passing beneath Tarkin's sharp-eyed gaze—he'd gladly take another round on Geonosis over dealing with any more brass.

Not surprisingly, his comm beeped not five minutes from the base. With a sigh, he blinked at the insistent light along the bottom of his HUD screen. "Rex here."

"Captain Rex, what is your location?"

Of all the people to comm him, he had truly not expected General Kenobi.

"En route to the Temple, sir."

"Good. Ahsoka's leaving. You need to head her off before she's gone."

"Sir?"

"Ahsoka left the Order."

_What?_

With those words, Rex nearly hit another speeder head-on. He noticed fleetingly the wide-eyed panic of a Human woman before sliding between two air taxis and under a slow-trundling mercantile transport.

Fek. Rex readjusted his grip on the bike and shook his head. It would be a perfect irony to survive every battle thus far and end up smeared across some Coruscanti luxury speeder's hood.

"Rex?"

Kenobi's voice held a frisson of alarm, probably due to the blare of angry horns through the comm.

"I'm here, sir." Barely. The commander _left_? "I—I don't understand, sir."

"She refused the Council's offer, and now she's leaving to Force-knows-where. She's smart, so I expect her to head for the Senate Dome rather than forsaking all sense and going to the streets, but one never knows. Regardless, I need you to stop her. I'd prefer not to send out a squad just yet, after everything else, so do make every effort to find her."

The general's rapid-fire response was hard to follow, stuck as Rex's mind was on "_left the Order"_. "S-sir, I don't—"

She couldn't just _leave_...could she?

"Try to hold her up. I'll be in touch after I've settled a few matters. How close are you to the Temple?"

"Just turned on Processional Way, sir," he belatedly realized. Must've been when he slid under the transport.

"Don't delay, Captain. I have a feeling we won't have this chance once she's off the Temple grounds."

"Sir?"

But Kenobi had already cut the transmission.

"Fek." The speeder bike jumped forward eagerly as he pushed it harder. _Don't do this, little'un_.

At the boulevard's inevitable end, the Temple's spires rose to nudge against cloud-smeared skies. Pale stone was bathed a dusty red in the deepening light of evening, and shadows lengthened to blot out the eastern subsidiaries and complexes. Yet as much as he magnified his HUD, he didn't see any telltale movement at the Temple's base; no distinctive heat-signature in a familiar form.

Another blare of horns—he was pretty sure he saw an overweight Besalisk shaking three fists at him as he shot between two supply haulers—and he'd somehow reached the broad expanse of the Temple's lower main plaza.

Rex idled only long enough for another sweep of his HUD before urging the speeder bike forward again, instincts firing at him to keep moving. At this point in the day, the Temple seemed deserted, civilian and military personnel gone for the evening and the Jedi cloistered away. Every other open plaza and courtyard he passed was empty and silent, devoid of even debris left by the almost constant waves of protesters. Perhaps they were celebrating their bloody victory; not a single anti-war or anti-clone sign was in sight.

She ran the first time for good reason. But now…?

_Kriff it—not now_. He didn't want to think beyond the general's orders.

It was as he passed the southwestern edge that he caught sight of two familiar montral tips in his magnified HUD, just as they disappeared down to a lowered pedestrian walk at the far end of a broad court, chevrons glowing vividly for a brief moment before vanishing from view.

"Commander Tano!" he bellowed. The speeder bike squealed in protest at his sudden rev and even more sudden stop, and then he was at the pedwalk and launching himself off the bike, down a stone-and-metal slideramp, and through a green-leafed arbor. Beyond, the pedwalk branched off a low-walled courtyard in about six different directions; some to slideramps leading down to other levels, others off toward narrow side-street bridges and roads.

_Shab_.

He hesitated for only a nanosec before instinctively pelting down the center way, following its slow curve into what looked like a small residential block, almost quaint beneath the looming bulk of the Temple. He could smell the smoky-sweet scent of cooking meat; hear the quiet drone of normal sentients going about their lives behind the solid, safe doors of their homes.

And in the center of the sun-warmed pedwalk was Ahsoka.

Her head was down, arms wrapped tight around her sides, the tension along her bared back strong enough to crack duracrete, every line of her body radiating a defeat that sent a flash of anger through him, fierce enough that his hands fisted and he suddenly couldn't hear anything over the grinding of his teeth.

This wasn't the Jedi he'd followed tirelessly; the one who wouldn't back down from a fight—especially a personal one.

"Commander?"

She hesitated, shoulders hunching up and forward. What the hell had happened up there that she would be reduced to _this_?

"Commander."

Biting back a growl of frustration when she still didn't turn around, Rex closed the distance to her side. But even then, her head was bowed and he couldn't see her face.

"Not now, Rex," she said. Her voice was cracked and thick and it jarred fiercely with the universe he'd securely fixed in his mind.

He wrenched off his helmet and stepped closer. "So you'd just leave?"

It took her too long to answer, and even then, her words only rattled through his head and left a buzzing like so many whisperflies. "I don't really have a choice."

"From what I heard, you _did_ have a choice, Commander."

Rex didn't think it possible, but her frame hunched even further forward, like a trooper bent with a punctured lung. The palms of his hands tingled; he wanted to reach out, but some instincts were too ingrained to overcome and he could only keep talking. "You were cleared. In my book, this is desertion."

_That_ lifted her head, but the sight of tear-tracks still wet on her cheeks hit him like a load of permacrete. He'd never seen her cry—and he'd seen her banged up and brought down plenty of times over the past two years.

She looked...

She looked like a child. Fek, she _was_ a child. Maybe not the youngling Skywalker had first trotted out, but she certainly didn't age on a clone's scale.

No, she was as much a child now as he was; raised to fight and lead and keep the men around them alive, or bear that burden the way he and General Skywalker had to: Alone.

"Don't do this, Commander."

She only shook her head and ducked away from him. But reflex shot his hand out to catch her elbow and she stilled. "Rex—"

He cut her off, knowing she'd only protest and not actually give any true answer—and he was _not_ going to listen to that. "I heard it all. I watched it all. You were cleared and reinstated. Your Council—" He hesitated. He'd seen himself that there could be a bad batch here and there even among his brothers, and there was nothing they could do but route them out and carry on. Slick had been proof enough of that. "Your Council was right to ask for your return. They need you—_we_ need you."

"No," she said, and now her voice shivered with something besides defeat. When she met his gaze, her focus was intense and somehow ancient. "You don't."

It was like another blow. "How can you say that?"

But her expression only hardened and she moved forward. Rex stayed at her side.

"Tell me, Commander."

"I'm not a commander anymore."

"You are Ahsoka Tano, Commander of the five-hundred-and-first and I have not watched your back for two years for you to just walk away."

To his growing irritation, that only earned a humorless sidelong glance. "You just told me that I was a deserter."

With a frustrated sigh he grasped her elbow, forcing her to stop. The sun on her face made her skin glow an even deeper orange, but there was a flatness to her complexion, an ashen hue to her markings and the hollows beneath her eyes.

"Commander. Why?"

It might've been the particular tone he used; it had worked in those early months on the _Resolute,_ after she'd been assigned to Skywalker and she'd somehow been more underfoot than anything else. Regardless, Ahsoka relented. "I'm supposed to become a Jedi Knight and trust the same Council who just fed me to the executioner. And don't tell me they wouldn't have, because I know better."

She winced and glanced down; Rex realized he hadn't released her arm. His grip had clenched tighter and tighter as she spoke and he quickly dropped his hand.

"And I'm supposed to keep going—to what?" she went on, gaze still fixed downward, so that he could only see the brilliant blue of her chevrons against the white curves of her montrals, luminous in the light. "Where do I go from there?"

She asked the question softly, almost hesitantly, and he realized she truly didn't know; that _not_ knowing frightened her—Ahsoka, the same Jedi who had faced down pirates and assassins and thousands of droids and even Grievous.

The eerie similarity of her question to his own doubts in the wake of Krell's carnage—when he'd stood as just another survivor in the hazy, eternal night of Umbara—made his skin crawl. As a soldier, he shouldn't have asked those questions; as a man, he had to.

But when she looked up at him again, her eyes seemed too big for her face and he wondered why he so desperately wanted her to stay.

"We need you out there, Commander," he finally said.

Again, that quiet, firm denial. "No, Rex. You don't."

The irony of the situation didn't escape him. He clenched his fists, suddenly irritated at her obstinacy. "You're not the only one who's had to deal with traitors. This war is getting to everyone—I understand that. But what's going to happen if we all decide to walk away? What then?"

She didn't answer and he stepped even closer. He could smell the sharp musk from her leather bracers and see the growth-ridges along her headdress' akul teeth. "Me and my men—we don't get a choice, do we?"

"Please, Rex—_please_ understand—I'm not doing this—"

"Then tell me why!"

"I'm trying to!" she snapped, and he was glad to hear a bit of her familiar fire again. She took a breath, briefly closed her eyes, then started talking. "You, maybe more than anyone else, should understand why I need to do this."

"No. No—I—" He paused and half-laughed, utterly nonplussed. "I really don't."

She crossed her arms tightly over her middle and again peered up at him with that odd, unsettling gaze. "No one really knows why Master Krell decided to defect."

"You once said the dark side was growing stronger, remember?"

He remembered the occasion vividly; after Umbara, in the half-light of an empty officer's mess, as he'd hunched over a mug of caf and tried to ward off the demanding pull of his over-exhausted body, she'd found him and sat beside him and simply talked. About the Jedi, the Force; about her younger self and the training she'd had as an Initiate. She'd almost casually stated it. "_And a__Il Jedi can feel it. It's always there."_ She hadn't mentioned Krell by name or even by side reference; maybe she knew it was too soon. But she'd _known_ he needed to understand.

But how could she _not_ know this was the same? Twisted and callous—but stripped to the basics, it amounted to the same betrayal.

"Yes. But there wasn't anything to even _suggest_ that Krell would have defected. Even Count Dooku spoke out before leaving."

"Not true. I heard about Krell before Umbara. I heard what kind of troop losses he thought were acceptable."

"Do you remember when I took the younglings to Ilum?"

He stumbled over her words for a moment, baffled at her jump in logic. "Yes, but—"

"Before the war, Master Krell was the one who took the younglings. Master Yoda was there, too," she amended, "but Master Krell led them on their Gathering. He did that for decades, as far as I know. He was also an instructor at the Temple before the Wars."

The thought of that creature teaching or leading younglings anywhere was…terrifying.

Yet that also meant Krell had taken Ahsoka on her Gathering. "He was...your instructor."

She nodded mutely.

He stared at her for a long moment, his throat too tight to breathe through, the lightsabers still clipped beneath his _kama_ somehow heavier than before.

With a quick flick of his wrist, he unclipped both and held them out to her, suddenly desperate to get them back into her hands.

She flinched at the sight of them. "No, Rex."

"They're yours—they belong with you."

"I don't think the Council would agree."

At the moment, he really didn't give a flying ronto what the Council thought. "Commander—"

"I'm _not_ a commander anymore."

At least he could refute that. "Technically, you are." At her furrowed brow, he added, "They haven't processed your discharge, far as I know."

"That doesn't matter, Rex—"

"It does to me. And to all the men of the five-oh-first. And you know it."

She dropped her gaze, but not before he saw the telltale gleam of moisture in her eyes.

"It doesn't really matter what any of us think."

"Doesn't it? And if it doesn't, what's the point of anything you're saying?"

Silence held between them for a long moment, strained by the ineptitudes of a reality neither of them wanted to put words around.

When she spoke again, her voice was rough and dry, as if ground down by the Geonosian desert itself. But she didn't answer his question. "Barriss—she was better than that. She couldn't have done that—not—not the Barriss I knew."

Rex had to wet his lips before he could speak, and even then, he chose his words carefully; regardless of their own opinions, he had to say it. "What we believe we know isn't necessarily the truth."

Her eye-markings rose when she met his gaze again, and a small, sad smile crooked the corners of her mouth. "Exactly."

"But that doesn't mean you have to leave—"

"Yes, it _does_, Rex. Barriss was the last person who should ever have turned..." Her voice broke and she seemed to fold even further in on herself. She glanced at the lightsabers still in his hands and turned her head away with a wince. "And I don't understand how that happened. I don't understand anything anymore." She took a long, slow breath. "But I know that I can't be a Jedi right now. Not like this."

"But _why_?"

"Because I can't trust them.… And if I can't trust them, then I can't trust myself, Rex."

"That's—that's ridi—"

"Don't you dare," she cut across him vehemently.

"Commander, with all due respect, you are everything I have ever been taught about the Jedi. How can you _not_ be one?" He glanced down at the lightsabers. In her deft grip, the sabers were solid and lethal; in his, they almost seemed delicate. "That's—that's like me not being a clone. We can't change what we are."

"That's what I'm trying to say, Rex," she said, exasperated. "You know you're not just a clone."

Ahsoka's voice was soft and he had to swallow before he could reply. "It comes down to that, same as you. And you and I know it."

He could tell by her stricken expression that she'd caught the implication, but couldn't refute it.

Ahsoka, out of any Jedi, should understand. She and Skywalker embodied everything he believed about the Jedi, everything the Kaminoans had so diligently pushed into his brain, although outside the white walls of Tipoca City and Kamino's carefully phrased doctrines, he'd quickly realized the Jedi were as diverse a breed as his brothers' individual personalities.

But Skywalker and Ahsoka—_they_ were the fearless, indomitable creatures he'd endlessly trained and simmed to serve beneath. He'd spent almost ten years secretly wondering if they could possibly exist as the Kaminoans described—and he knew he hadn't been the only one—but his first battle under Skywalker had ended with his blood singing for _more_ and he knew the Jedi could do anything.

Even now, when a more brutal reality had replaced those first fleeting impressions, he would always _feel_ the imprint of Skywalker and Ahsoka—the galaxy stretching and bending as his commander and general pushed and pulled it around them, close enough that Rex could touch but still somewhere beyond everything he could fully wrap his mind around.

He knew Ahsoka loved being a Jedi; that she wanted nothing more but to take her place in the Order. She'd jabbered on enough about it when Skywalker had assigned Rex the onerous task of mentor, right after Christophsis, before the general fully grasped the magnitude of his own responsibility.

The change from then—that smart-mouthed, brash, scrawny youngling—to now was remarkable in too many ways, and he had to clench his jaw against the sudden, utter emptiness that washed over him and left him cold.

She would really leave, would willingly walk away from everything she'd known, from the war and _all _the men of the 501st.

The chill turned into an icy pain that spread from his chest into his gut, and when he spoke, he heard the barest crack in his voice and hated it.

"Don't do this, Ahsoka."

She hesitated before answering, and when he focused on her face, he suddenly recognized that same pain, reflected in her familiar blue eyes.

"I _need_ to do this, Rex," and her voice was soft and as broken as Bolo's war-ravaged face, and Rex wondered if maybe he _did_ understand.

* * *

**A/N**: Krell's previous foray as an instructor was inspired off a lovely sketch by the talented **lledra**. I tweaked her headcanon, but all credit for even being nudged in that direction goes to her. And if you're rightfully disgusted by the thought of Krell being an instructor, always remember that monsters aren't necessarily monsters at first—just like our friend in a shiny black suit.


	6. Chapter 5

"The Jedi Order is your life. You can't just throw it away like this!"

—Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker

* * *

A blip from Rex's comm broke the silence.

With a curse at the timing, he thumbed his commlink, gloved fingers rubbing absently at the lightsaber hilts still in his hands. He kept his eyes locked on Ahsoka, half-suspecting she would simply vanish if he let himself get distracted.

She was a Jedi, after all, even if she denied it all the way to the Rishi Maze.

"Rex here."

"Your location, Captain?"

It was Kenobi.

"Southwest quadrant, two blocks from the Temple, sir."

One white eye-marking rose as he spoke.

"If you have company, do invite them to the lower Temple Hangar B, Captain."

Rex hesitated, studying her expression before answering. "Yes, sir."

With a click, Kenobi ended the transmission.

Ahsoka's gaze had turned remarkably stony. "No, Rex."

He was silent a moment, considering the response that would convince her to come. She was stubborn, but her particular brand of honor would always win out.

Surely Kenobi could force some sense back into her.

"You owe me this."

Her face crumpled and he knew he'd hit low; it worked, but kark it if he didn't feel like Hutt-slime saying it.

With the lightsabers once again clipped beneath his _kama_, he walked at her side back to his abandoned speeder bike, away from the little neighborhood and its sounds of muffled voices and laughter and that salt tang of fried charbote root.

But her silence was pointed and even during the ride down to the hangar, she managed a credible imitation of a duracrete statue riding pillion behind him.

"Ahsoka," Kenobi said by way of greeting, as Rex slid the speeder bike to a stop above the smooth stone floor. "I'm glad Captain Rex was able to find you."

Rex ignored the semi-dirty look she fired at him after she slipped off the bike.

And when she took up a defensive stance just out of arm's reach of Kenobi and Rex, arms folded across her chest and expression dark, Rex wanted to call her on it. She was rightfully irritable—she'd practically been sent to the slaughterhouse vibroblock just hours before—but she didn't need to revert to a petulant youngling.

Granted, it was almost impossible to reconcile the young, competent Togruta woman in front of him with the snark-mouthed kid Skywalker had saddled on him, back at Christophsis.

Karking hells, how _was_ the general taking this? No way Skywalker would let her go without a fight.

Rex glanced around the deserted hangar, wondering if the general would now come blowing in with all the force of a Kaminoan hurricane. And Force take it, they _needed _Ahsoka. Rex and his men would carry on—they always would—but losing her…

A minute of silence stretched between the three of them and there was no sign of Skywalker.

Rex shifted uncomfortably and his skin prickled. Nothing seemed _right_ about any of this, even though Kenobi seemed content to simply study Ahsoka, one hand at his bearded chin—and Ahsoka seemed content to glare back.

"Ahsoka," Kenobi finally said, a quiet sort of regret in the man's voice, "there is truly nothing I could say that would even begin to mend what has been done. Nor, at this time, should I try. Words, as you well know, have the capability of being so very empty."

Ahsoka's glare darkened even further.

Whatever had been said in the Council's chamber could _not_ have been good.

"Quite frankly," the general went on, "I agree with your assessment—and admire your decision."

That…sent another prickle of concern across his skin and across the back of his neck. He stared openly at Kenobi, utterly thrown.

The general wasn't supposed to _encourage _her.

Kenobi's response seemed just as unexpected to Ahsoka. Her glare narrowed into something as sharp-eyed as a shriek-hawk.

"Quite so," the general reiterated with a hint of a smile, as if in answer to an unspoken remark.

And Rex realized this was _not _going to be what he'd desperately hoped for. "General Kenobi, with all due respect—"

Kenobi didn't turn to Rex, but something in the subtle change in the man's posture cut Rex off and he buried a surge of frustration. Kark it, why were all Jedi so stubborn?

But Kenobi's focus remained steadily on Ahsoka. "I, too, left the Order as a Padawan."

_What_?

"_You_?" Ahsoka seemed to realize a moment too late that her voice had edged away from surprise and more into sardonic disbelief. She shook her head. "No offense meant, Master Kenobi, but you—"

"You're certainly making me feel my age," he cut across her, tone dry enough to make Tatooine sound hospitable. "I was once a Padawan myself, despite what Anakin might say."

The corners of her mouth twitched just a bit, away from that glaring frown and edging toward simply impassive. "No, Master. I...only meant that it doesn't sound like you."

No, it didn't. Rex had to fight to keep from staring too blatantly.

_Kenobi_ had walked away from the Order?

But then...it wouldn't have been in the middle of a galaxy-wide war. The most pivotal war in the Republic's history.

"Ah, but we all change a great deal from our youth." He offered her a small smile. "Or perhaps we can only hope as much. And as Anakin was my Padawan, I'm certain you understand."

Her lips twitched just a bit more.

Rex didn't find anything funny about the situation and he was _not _letting this go without a fight. Ahsoka could never be anything _but _a Jedi. "General Kenobi, sir, Commander Tano is one of the best and most valuable members of the 501st." Kenobi turned as Rex spoke, and even though he could practically feel the man's piercing look all the way to the back of his skull, Rex carried on. "We need her out there, now more than ever."

He sensed more than saw Ahsoka withdrawing further from him, but kept his gaze locked with Kenobi's. The general, surprisingly, looked away first. "Yes, that is a fair assessment."

"Then—"

"Yet we've lost many good soldiers over the course of the war; I needn't remind you. There will always exist the possibility of losing even the best among us."

The wry censure to the Jedi's voice cut off any other arguments Rex might've attempted, although the urge to slip on his bucket and curse a blue hyperlane nearly won out over his better sense.

He should request a dismissal. He had no business here—not now, not if this was happily _sanctioned_ by the Order.

But a coil of something bitter curled in his esophagus and he had to swallow down the _reality _of Ahsoka's departure. It hit with all the force of a det and he could only stand rooted to his spot on the well-shined floor.

She really would _leave_, and the Order would simply wave goodbye as she trotted off into the sunset. She'd walk away from Skywalker and Kenobi, from her Order and her men.

From him.

"Why?" Ahsoka asked. She was studying the general, her brow furrowed enough to draw her white markings sharply together.

"Why did I leave?" At her nod, Kenobi gave her a small smile. "I was young and determined to aid in a cause, one that both the Council and the Senate thought the greater galaxy should have no part in."

"A civil war," Ahsoka assumed. At the general's nod, she added, "But you came back."

Rex had dropped his gaze, unable to keep his focus fully on the two of them, but his eyes snapped up at that. Kenobi had come back. Surely that meant…

No matter the inner problems of the Jedi Order—and he'd heard enough from Skywalker to singe his ears, on and off over the last couple of years—Kenobi himself was the simple truth that reconciliation _could_ be had.

Considering all Ahsoka had said before, back along the neighborhood pedwalk, maybe she really did just need some time.

_Hells, little'un. Of all the times to go for a walkaround…_

But as he shifted his grip on his helmet, unclenching the fist he'd unconsciously made, he wondered if he'd still be around by the time she got back.

Kenobi's sigh was long and full of a wealth of things left unsaid. "Yes. That in itself was a long and difficult path. I do not regret either my decision to leave or to return—naturally—but I also believe my decision was the best choice I could have made at that time and in that situation."

He drew a slender datachip from his robes, held it up so that it caught the light in the hangar, then pointedly met Ahsoka's regard before offering it to her. "Which is only as much as any of us can do, at any point in our lives, hm?"

Ahsoka's gaze flicked between Kenobi and the chip and she had that same impassive expression on her face again.

"Enough credits to get you by for at least a year. Perhaps longer, if you're extremely frugal."

"_No_. Master Kenobi, I can't—"

"Ah, but you can. And I ask that you do." The general took a step closer, but Ahsoka stood frozen, arms still locked in front of her, and she only stared up at the general like a particularly obstinate tooka cat.

With a sigh, Kenobi stepped back. "All I ask is that you consider the offer. This chip simply has the pertinent information; coded, of course, but you should certainly recognize it all through any credit bank."

But she was shaking her head. "Master Kenobi, I don't—"

"Want any ties to the Order? To your associates, your friends?"

There was a gentle edge to the general's voice that Rex automatically stiffened at; so, too, did Ahsoka. That stubborn streak was rearing up with a vengeance.

"It's not that I don't appreciate the offer…"

"But perhaps not the circumstances surrounding it?" Before she could respond, Kenobi went on. "Might I remind you that even rogue planets feel the pull of gravity. Whether that pull is a black hole or a viable system is an important distinction." He paused, then amended, "Give or take several billion years."

She quirked an eye marking at him and Rex could almost see the smart remark on her lips. But surprisingly, she only said, ruefully, "The same could be said of the Order, you know."

Rex ground his teeth together. It was like watching a hoverball match.

Scratch that, it was more like watching his bolo team on a losing play.

Kenobi inclined his head in acquiescence. "Naturally." And with another brief smile, he turned and gestured toward a hulking red-and-white _Eta_-class shuttle, nestled near the hangar's open bay. It was a sleek thing, winged like a bird and crowned with a fletch-like stabilizer. Along one side were etched the numerals 634.

"You can't be serious." Ahsoka's voice had a wry weight to it that actually warmed Rex's chest a bit. She was sounding more...normal.

Although _he_ certainly couldn't share the sentiment.

"Quite serious, I'm afraid." Kenobi was obviously enjoying this. "Normally takes two pilots, but I'm sure you can handle it. You're familiar with this particular one, after all, and while it seems to be giving everyone else some problems, it certainly hasn't given me any when I've required it. I'm sure you're up to the task."

"Why are you doing this?"

_Good question, _Rex thought, not without a tinge of bitter disappointment. He gave the shuttle a once-over; it was an ambassadorial type, swift and capable, and had its share of weaponry. Nothing major, but still…

What did Kenobi expect her to be _doing_ out there?

"Well, it _was _slated for decommission." The general peered up at the globular cockpit. "Really has been quite temperamental, but I'm serious when I say it hasn't seemed out of sorts when I've had to use it."

"Not just the ship, Master Kenobi—all of this. I'm not the only one to ever leave the Order."

"Ah, but I do think these circumstances are unique." He paused as if to reconsider, still half-facing the shuttle. "I'm almost certain of it, and I at least try to be a student of the Order's history."

"Master Kenobi," she tried again, exasperated, but the general turned toward her fully and raised one blond eyebrow, and somehow, Rex was fiercely reminded of a clever clawmouse baiting a tooka kitten.

"I should think it obvious."

She shook her head, mouth thinned in a stubborn line, and Kenobi seemed to relent. "Ahsoka, we have wronged you terribly. That, in itself, should not be ignored for the sake of expediency and convenience."

"Master Kenobi, I can't accept all this."

The general studied her. "I know you want to throw off every connection to the Order, but I ask that you consider—truly consider—what that entails. And yes, while this is perhaps a small token in hopes of reconciliation," his gaze somehow became sharper and deeper, and Rex was reminded of the fact that Kenobi was called the Negotiator for a reason, "you are deserving of the freedom to understand your own course."

A deserving gesture. _But do you _have _to send her off?_

"I appreciate the offer and the sentiment, Master Kenobi, but that's _not _the reason I'm leaving."

Rex's gaze swiveled to focus back on her, brow furrowed. Then what was all that talk before?

He bit back the question but mentally re-ran her arguments from not even twenty minutes before.

Next to him, Kenobi's eyebrows disappeared into his heavy forelock. "Please, do correct my assumptions."

Her sigh was small but Rex heard the frustration there.

And—oddly—in that moment, he finally understood.

And all the things she'd said before, while they'd stood in the middle of the little neighborhood, finally clicked into place—and his respect for his little commander—_ex_-commander—rose to the heights of Coruscant's spacescrapers.

But _fek_.

None of this was a selfish reaction; none of it was to simply "_find her own way_"; none of this was meant to hurt his men or General Skywalker or even the Order as a whole, and _every bit of it_ was simply to make sure she wouldn't become one of the monsters they'd both faced over the past year.

She'd taken the Council's lack of faith and would now move the galaxy to make sure she could trust her very self. And if that meant walking away from everything she'd ever known, she had the guts and determination and damned honor to do it.

While Jedi could only be a species unto themselves, he truly didn't want to know what would happen if the darkness Ahsoka had spoken so carefully of ever fully rose and took control.

If Krell was only a hint of what a Jedi could fall to...

But still. _Fek._

"I _need _to understand why this happened, Master Kenobi. That wasn't the Barriss I knew. She was a _healer_. A _good _healer. If this war is making someone like her into...into that, I can't—"

Her hands dropped to her sides and her fingers twitched, as if in need of a lightsaber in her grasp.

Rex could've sworn he felt the saber hilts under his _kama _pulse with a prickly heat.

Kenobi was silent for a long moment.

Rex openly studied them both; the weary defeat that still hovered over Ahsoka's shoulders and the fine lines around Kenobi's blue eyes, deeper than Rex remembered, with a strain and weight in both their gazes that reminded Rex of troopers bearing forward on some hellish, never-ending siege.

Kenobi's voice was rough but gentle when he finally spoke again. "Then all the more reason for you to have the ability and opportunity to carry forward, Ahsoka."

Curiously, she turned her focus on Rex, and all over again, her bright eyes seemed too big for her face.

"If you're going," he heard himself saying, "no trooper deploys unprepared into unfamiliar territory."

His implicit acceptance seemed to break whatever was left of her hesitation and a brief—but warm—smile flashed at him. "Thank you."

A universe of meaning echoed through those simple words.

Kenobi inclined his head and, after a quick glance at Rex, stepped away. "Ahsoka, regardless of your choice—" He hesitated, then bowed, a graceful, somehow powerful act. "May the Force guide your way."

"Master Kenobi—" Ahsoka began as the general straightened. He stilled, mild gaze expectant.

"Take care of him. Please. I'm not doing this to hurt—"

Kenobi, however, lifted a hand to forestall her words. "I will, Ahsoka. And I know. Our choices will always inherently affect those around us, but even then, their choice—even as a reaction—is a matter of their own consequence."

Rex followed that somewhat.

But as Kenobi turned for the hangar's far exit, Ahsoka spoke again. "Master Kenobi, which war?"

The general's eyebrows rose again, but there was a smile curving the corners of his mouth. "Melida/Daan." And then he was gone.

The general's admission shouldn't have surprised Rex, yet somehow did. There was very little to have been learned from the guerilla tactics employed at Melida/Daan, and his training had only touched on the length of the conflict and the ineffectiveness of most civilians to enact any lasting victory.

No Jedi had been mentioned in the texts. But then, if Kenobi had left the Order at that time, there wouldn't have been.

It was an odd twist of facts that somehow left him unsettled.

When Rex glanced at Ahsoka, her gaze was thoughtful.

"Ahsoka…" Her name on his tongue felt awkward and foreign. He didn't know why—he'd called her by name before—but his view of the galaxy had shifted, like a too-abrupt drop out of hyperspace, caught unaware by the tug of a gravity well.

Although when he unclipped the lightsabers and offered them to her once more, the twist of her lips was as intimately familiar as his deeces.

"Rex." There was that dry, self-deprecating humor back in her voice, but he wouldn't let her wander off to Force-knows-where without a means to defend herself—and he'd be damned if he didn't know Kenobi thought the same. "They're really not mine to have."

"I think both Generals Skywalker and Kenobi would approve if these remained in your possession."

Again, a brief flicker of humor—although this time, in her eyes. "Thanks for the show of faith, despite my desertion."

Kriff it if _that _didn't hit him somewhere hard. "I will make no more assumptions regarding your personal decisions, Comm—Miss Tano."

But she was shaking her head and reaching out a hand to grasp his vambrace; a touch that only seemed to expand the hollow in his chest out to his extremities.

"I'm sorry, Rex. That was uncalled for."

He briefly closed his eyes. "This is—I...I don't—"

But whatever he'd tried to articulate died on his lips when he felt her arms wrap around him and her head tuck beneath his chin. And he was almost certain a vacuum dropped down on his lungs and the act of breathing became too hard to attempt.

"I'm sorry. I'm _sorry_..." she was saying, and he could feel those words all the way through the plastoid armor to the skin beneath his bodyglove.

He swallowed thickly when she stepped away, and when he dropped his gaze, he was somehow surprised to see the lightsabers still in his hands.

"Ahsoka," he managed to say, and maybe something in his voice convinced her, because she slid them from his grasp. The galaxy clicked just a notch back into place when she clipped the sabers to her belt.

"Thank you. For everything." Her smile was watery but genuine.

"Ahsoka—if you ever need anything—don't think you are alone. Just—just ask." He unclipped his bucket and glanced down at the well-worn helmet in his hands, fingers sliding along its curves. "But don't disappear on me, kid."

He hated how broken his voice sounded, but he still felt like he couldn't breathe properly.

"Thanks, Rex," she said softly. "I won't."

Rex took a slow, steadying breath and snapped a salute that would've made the Chancellor proud. A little of the chill in his chest thawed when she saluted him in return, her smile brightening into something reminiscent of her younger, snippier self.

"Remember, Comm—Ahsoka," catching himself again as he dropped his hand, "if you need anything, just ask. I don't rank a general, but I know how to call in a favor."

She almost laughed at that, and when she answered, he could see the sincerity in her eyes. "I will."

Rex could only nod, feeling a bit like an escape pod cut adrift. He stared at her, suddenly unwilling to leave. The prospect of facing the war without her ahead of him, a whirling fire of orange and brilliant green next to the fury of brown and bright blue of General Skywalker, seemed intolerable.

"Actually..." She paused, eyes unfocused and expression suddenly pensive. "There is something."

"Anything." And he meant it.

Only to recognize too late a distinct gleam in her eyes.

"Has my military discharge been processed yet?"

* * *

"Where have you been hiding, Trench?" muttered Admiral Yularen.

A sip from his duraplast mug and a grimace later, Yularen realized he'd been staring at the holosimulator and mission stats for far too long. His third mug of caf had gone stone cold.

In the quiet stillness of the _Resolute_'s deserted bridge, the image of Ringo Vinda hovered at eye level in front of him, rotating in miniature grandeur sans the gas planet it encircled. Red and yellow dots glowed in irregular clusters along the disc-station's various industrial docks and orange piping marked the clearest access for any large task force.

Even so, the GAR could only guess at Trench's true base of operations along the station's broad circumference. The Harch had proven remarkably slippery, even to the ARCs, and Ringo Vinda was _huge._ Their sole Null assigned them had provided the only chance of locating Trench within that vast tangle of phantom electronic signals and energy pulses, but sorting through all the gathered data had left Yularen with a pounding headache. Not surprisingly, _this _Null had no compunction in leaving his reports and schematics a tech-heavy sprawl of information.

A Null was a Null, after all, and Yularen was glad he rarely worked with them.

Yet something about the assignment prickled with a vague and elusive..._wrongness_ and he didn't like it.

Which was an irritating reaction. The Jedi were the ones who spent their time following enigmatic impulses; not a seasoned campaigner with a decorated admiralty.

"Ah, Skywalker," Yularen said as the general himself stepped onto the bridge. "Glad you could join me. The ARCs brought in quite a bit of data, but I'd rather have your eyes than RI's." Incompetent sons of droids, all of them. He shook his head as he swiped at the hologram in front of him; the image turned to highlight one docking ring. "We suspect Trench has barricaded himself within this particular processing sector. It is perhaps the most logical and well-suited area for a base of operations, yet will prove quite tricky for any direct engagement."

It didn't help matters that this was _Trench_, miraculously reappeared from a dead-on torpedo hit. Yet Tarkin had insisted that this was a target of highest priority. If the station and the planet below had offered anything other than one of the Republic's most valuable sources of naturally stable, gaseous metallics, Yularen would have thought Tarkin had a few greenputt balls loose under his graying pate.

It might be a strategist's dream—Skywalker would likely love hunting down Trench—but it was _not_, however, going to be a clean victory. Brilliant, perhaps—the general always managed it—but in no way easy.

It took him a moment to realize Skywalker hadn't joined him at the holotable. In fact, the Jedi was simply standing in the middle of the bridge, looming like some krayt dragon over the forward navigation array. "General Skywalker?"

Still the man didn't answer. Yularen straightened.

"General, is there a problem?"

When the Jedi turned to him, he very nearly flinched. The young man's haggard face was lined and drawn in a way that made him look decades older. He considered repeating his question, but cast aside the impulse immediately.

"I can only assume," Yularen said instead, turning back to the holosimulator, "that you are the bearer of bad news."

"Ahsoka left the Order."

Yularen took a moment to consider both the young man's announcement and his voice. "An unusual choice."

Skywalker didn't respond.

Silence stretched, overlaid only by the hum of electronics.

"Ringo Vinda will be a difficult objective," Yularen finally said, careful to keep his tone mild. "More so now."

From the corner of his eye, he could see the general's lanky form stiffen and—instantly—the air around the admiral tightened to something indefinable. Yularen felt—briefly—his lungs falter against the pressure and then—so quickly he wondered if he imagined it all—he could breathe normally again.

"Yes," Skywalker said simply.

The young man stepped to Yularen's side and the admiral forced himself to remain where he was, despite his body's instinct to back away.

"Shall we?" he heard himself say, and was grateful that his voice still worked as normal. "I believe there are many more matters to be attended to, now."

Skywalker took another long moment to reply, and when he spoke, there was a tightly held anger there that Yularen could only vaguely recall from the passions of his own youth, when everything in his sphere of influence seemed so important and the loss of one aspect of his life meant the loss of all.

Ironic, perhaps, what age could do to one's sensibilities; he'd received the divorce datafiles from his wife only a month ago, and still only felt a dim disappointment.

Even Jedi couldn't avoid the stranglehold of youth's emotions, it seemed.

"Let's get this over with," the Jedi said. "This time I'm killing him myself."

Yularen made the careful choice not to be disturbed by that promise.

* * *

**A/N**: ...and we should move faster from here on out. Ahsoka's reasons for leaving the Order, however, were deserving of a healthy dose of extrapolation. ...It just got an extra couple of helpings in there.


	7. Chapter 6

**A/N**: Many thanks for every bit of support! I'm so sorry for the lack of response, but am extremely grateful for every encouragement and beautiful review. Have had a very ill little one this week (who is now happily on the mend) and spare moments have been few and far between (and thus, the posting delay, as well). But, finally, chapter 6!

* * *

"In this war, a danger there is, of losing who we are."

-Grand Master Yoda

* * *

"You're sure about this?"

"Absolutely."

"Not quite what I had in mind," Rex muttered.

Ahsoka shot a bemused look over her shoulder. Rex had re-donned his helmet and the high white spotlights of the GAR's vast parade ground gleamed off the battered but well-shined plastoid. He'd also taken her six—either by choice or just instinctively—and it was reassuring for him to have her back one last time.

"I promise, no running."

"You had a good reason for it, last time," he noted.

True. But she hated being back here. The scrubbed gouges from her destroyed speeder were dark against the duracrete and the air was still wet and heavy from the downpour two nights before, as if Coruscant's atmosphere simply refused to align to its prescribed ambience.

it was equally hard not to jerk away from every floodlight that panned across the broad courtyard at the base's entrance, where the wind snapped at the pendants overhead and the First Battle Memorial loomed up next to her and she had to push back the sudden, intense memory of the searing heat of plasma bolts and a hundred booted feet thundering at her back.

Even the Force seemed to rebel; it shuddered against her mind, too much like a breeze trembling beneath the weight of an oncoming storm.

She swallowed and only walked faster.

Ahead, the GAR's Coruscant base loomed out of the night, an ever vigilant—and demanding—beast. At this hour, tanks and walkers were still marching with platoons along the light-washed grounds; the GAR, she supposed, didn't bother with a skeletal third watch. It was full-gear shows or nothing.

"Can't guarantee how long you'll have," Rex said as they approached the base's tunnel-like entrance. "By procedure, you should already be discharged."

"I don't think Anakin went to the Council before getting me reinstated. So, unless the Council delivers the news to the Chancellor or Anakin processes the discharge himself, I should have some time. Enough, anyway, to do what I have to do."

"Alright," he agreed, although reluctantly. "But let me secure the clearance."

Ahsoka shot another glance at him. The press of personnel and troopers was heavier as she entered the base proper, and she stepped closer to him and lowered her voice. "Rex, if you really object to this..."

"No, Comm—" He broke off, sighed, then admitted, "That's gonna take some getting used to."

_You and me, both_. "For now, I think you can conveniently forget that little detail."

She couldn't see his half-grin, but she knew it was there.

Squinting against the harsh white light, she forced herself to walk with the same confidence and authority she'd learned over the past two years, although with every red-painted Coruscant Guard she passed, she wondered if they'd been part of the complement that had chased her.

_Following orders._ _They were just following orders, Ahsoka_, she reminded herself, giving another passing squad a return nod when they stood to quick attention.

The Force still threaded through her mind with that same uncertain shudder, and at one point, she nearly winced when it tweaked like a bad comm receiver. It told her just enough that the vast majority of Guard she encountered felt utter apathy toward her—bizarre in its own way—and the other personnel recognized her merely as _'Jedi' _and _'in the way_', but in a far broader sense than her stroll down a GAR corridor.

"How does the Council stand it?" she muttered. At the quizzical head-tilt from Rex, she only shook her head. Maybe there was a good reason the Council called GAR personnel to the Temple, rather than vice versa.

Commander Fox, not surprisingly, stood watch in his prison center relay station like a particularly territorial gundark.

Even after the requisite scan and removal of all items—she didn't have a comm anymore, but now that she had her lightsabers back, it was hard to give them up—Fox studied her for a long moment from behind his transparisteel cage, bucket cocked to one side and T-visor dark and quietly menacing. It was impossible to tell if he happened to be considering their request, confirming her clearance level, or simply checking the podrace rankings.

She made the mistake of feeling him out with the Force and met a crackling wall of wards, unexpected enough that she flinched.

Rex, ever vigilant, shifted closer.

Why they needed that level of protection in the prison sector's relay station was a question better left unasked.

Ahsoka had to fight to keep from fidgeting.

"I understand why you'd want to question the prisoner, sir," Fox finally said, his voice tinny behind his helmet and through the voice-box for the enclosed relay, although there was a tinge of heat in his tone that rubbed uneasily against her montrals. "Cell block 7-C. Let's not have a repeat of last time."

He jerked his chin toward the distant energy fields and turned back to his surveillance monitors, letting two silent troopers escort them on.

At least she and Rex were in.

Past a familiar series of energy gates and into the depths of a high-security sector, the troopers took up flanking positions outside the cell block's buzzing orange energy field. Unlike Letta's cell, however, every small chamber within was open to view from the cell block itself, every opening only closed by activated energy fields.

Ahsoka was grateful for that; the more witnesses, the better, regardless of what might be said.

The heavy, crackling scent of ionized air coated the back of her throat and she swallowed against it before crossing her arms and deciding honesty was the best route.

Five steps, and she faced the only occupied cell.

A familiar dark-robed form sat there, meditating, straight-backed and calm.

"Tell me why."

The bright blue of Barriss' eyes, tinted a deep gray in the cell's red-hued light, met her gaze; something flickered there at Ahsoka's words, but the rest of her remained impassive.

"This isn't you. You were better than this—you've always been better than this."

Still, the Mirilian was silent. Ahsoka briefly pressed with her Force-sense, but was met with a stinging sort of pain, like fine sand spitting against her skin.

"After everything that we've been through, you owe me the truth." She heard the slightest shuffle of boot tread as Rex shifted behind her and she inwardly pleaded for more time. Rex would surely receive notice via his HUD when the word went out about her discharge, but she just wanted a little time—just enough to get something from Barriss. Anything. "Just tell me—"

"There is nothing to tell."

The ice in Barriss' voice wrapped around Ahsoka's spine.

"Why did you frame me? Was that your intention all along?" Ahsoka persisted. "You knew we'd find out about the nanodroids eventually. You knew that would lead to Letta. Why did you tell her to contact me?"

A trickle of discomfort ran across Barriss' face; she shifted and the slight movement of her hands in her lap caught a flash of light on metal. It was only then that Ahsoka noticed the familiar strips encircling the other woman's wrists: Force-blocking binders.

"Barriss," Ahsoka tried again, although her name came out as more of a plea.

Barriss took a long, deep breath through her nose and met Ahsoka's gaze again. "Better that you would be imprisoned than what I have seen you will be."

"And what is _that_ supposed to mean?"

"That," she said slowly, with the same calm conviction Ahsoka had been so accustomed to, "is your future. The Order will fall, and the Republic with it." Her gaze moved over Ahsoka's shoulder, to where Rex stood. A ripple of disgust swept over her face; it was so out of character that Ahsoka glanced back at the captain. His head was cocked slightly, likely in answer to a comm, and by the subtle tip of his chin, she could tell he met her gaze briefly. He shifted on his feet just enough to tell her he didn't know what to think, either.

"We were friends, Barriss," she tried again, facing the cell once more. "I trusted you—I thought you trusted me! Why couldn't you have just come to me?"

Barriss merely shook her head and her face smoothed and blanked. Serene. Unflappable. It was maddening.

"You didn't want me imprisoned, Barriss. You wanted me dead."

Again, there was that shift of her hands, only this time, her gaze dropped, as well. _Maybe she wasn't _that_ unflappable_, Ahsoka realized.

"There is nothing to tell, Ahsoka. What is done—is done. Where you stand, I shall not stand with you."

"Really? _Nothing_? You _killed_ people, Barriss! You tried to kill _me_! What's happened to you?"

But it all had the opposite effect. Pushing Barriss only made her tamp down harder than an airlock, jaw working and eyes suddenly like tempered durasteel. "Their deaths are meaningless. And if your death could prevent what is to come, then I would have only done my duty to this Republic."

Barriss' words were clipped and sharp as crystal and hit with all the force of that fight in the Undercity.

And she realized it was no use.

Shaking her head, she turned her back on her old friend and gestured to Rex. Any longer in that place, and she'd probably say or do something that wouldn't be wise. Although Fox might deserve a few knocks to the helmet.

But before she'd taken two steps toward the cell block's exit and as if conjured by that one tiny thought, the red-painted commander appeared past the exit's energy field, tightly-held anger in every line of his armor. "Miss Tano, we've just received word of your resignation. Please follow me immediately out of military-restricted areas."

Ahsoka sighed. In all honesty, she'd expected it sooner.

She didn't expect Barriss' sharp echo. "Resignation?"

Ahsoka turned, skin prickling at the weight Barriss had put behind the question.

The former Jedi had moved to stand at her cell's field, bound hands held close to her chest. Her brow was creased and she was staring at Ahsoka with all the intense curiosity of a scientist over a particularly puzzling test subject.

And suddenly Ahsoka was angry—furious—at the double-speak and hidden meanings that everyone had thrown at her that day, from the Council's rapid-fire accusations in the Chamber of Judgment to Tarkin along the prosecution bridge; the Chancellor pushing doubt of her loyalties on all the Senators to Windu's questions up in the Council Chamber. But the heat of her anger simmered to something carbonite-hard in her chest as she studied Barriss' expression.

"Yeah," she finally said. "I left."

Barriss wasn't deterred, even when Ahsoka turned her back on her and stepped past the cell block's deactivated main energy field, felt the crackle of electricity as Fox reactivated the field, and her once-friend called after her, voice reverberating through the prison corridor.

"Get off Coruscant, Ahsoka. Get as far away as you can. There is no hope here!"

* * *

As Fives pulled a battered chair up to the current running sabacc game, Kix slapped down his freshly-turned set—to the groans of the four other clones slumped around the table. "Read 'em and eat 'em, womp rats."

"My karking luck," muttered a red-headed private with an unfortunate pair of carefully cultivated sideburns. Fives recognized him as a pilot from the small, select Rill Corps—membership of which apparently gave him leave to look ridiculous.

Bits of flimsi were scattered across the table, but a sizable pile teetered at Kix's elbow and the medic's grin brought to mind a self-satisfied Kowakian monkey-lizard preening over his hoard. It didn't take much to guess what kind of stakes Kix was amassing; the medic looked like he'd raked in some serious shore leave creds. 79s would be more than glad to see him darken the club's landing pad.

_After_ Ringo Vinda.

General Zey hadn't been impressed with Fives' delay for his debrief, nor had he been particularly happy that Fives had engaged the enemy prior to the actual campaign. But in Fives' holobook, it had made perfect sense that the station's previous security measures would include some fail-safes that went boom, especially if messed with by something as dumb as a bunch of clankers.

All in all, it had been a satisfactory end to the assignment and he was eager to get back there and finish the job.

"Your luck can't hold." There was a distinct note of irritation in Jesse's voice as he swept up the deck and dealt another hand, nodding toward Fives and placing a single card, face down, in front of the ARC. Kix only smirked and fondly re-stacked his pile of winnings.

Two other Torrent clones—Rork, a dour-faced heavy gunner, and Tull, a soft-spoken but sharp-eyed sniper—rounded out the play. Tup, Fives knew, was holed up in the barracks, determined to finish a few modifications to his gear prior to shipping out.

Fives took a peek at the card and grimaced. An Idiot's face peered back at him.

"So what's the word?" the red-head—Foley—asked, leaning across the table towards Fives as Jesse dealt out the second round.

Fives mentally discarded his own hand—a Six of Staves and an Idiot wouldn't get him far, for the moment—and quirked an eyebrow back at the pilot, wondering if the hair dye had sunk a bit too far into the other clone's brain. "On the commander? Captain Rex went off to see her. As far as I know, we're in the clear and departure's at 0450 tomorrow."

Foley waved off his answer. "No—Vinda." The pilot's teeth flashed in a feral grin. "I hear that Seppie Trench is a scary piece of sh—"

"We playin' or not?" snapped the waspish Rork. Foley leaned back with a shrug.

"Bets?" Jesse asked, looking pointedly at Fives.

Fives mulled that over a moment; he didn't particularly want to offer up his leave-creds—those easily traceable, military-issued currency that, for some reason, the GAR thought to be a good idea despite the uptick in cantina brawls—but he'd amassed his fair share in recent months.

Yet...

The corner of Fives' mouth twitched. "Some new mods," he offered.

Rork scoffed. "That ain't worth ten."

"Where'd you get 'em?" Jesse asked, clearly intrigued.

Fives hesitated for the effect, gloved fingers tapping the edges of his cards. "We had a Null with us at Vinda."

Kix's interest perked quickly. "Wait, a Null? Mods on what?"

Fives patted his bucket, still clipped to his side, with affection.

Jesse let out a low whistle as he slid a bit of flimsi and a stylus at Fives. "Mods it is."

"Still don't think it's worth the bet," Rork put in sourly as Fives scrawled his signature numeral, although the others ignored the heavy gunner's complaints.

Fives gestured at Jesse; the shifts were made and the Six went back into the pile. The Idiot and a Three of Staves were now tucked between Fives' fingers. He cracked his neck before answering Foley. "Vinda—it ain't gonna be easy. Fekkin' big station." He grinned lazily. "If it didn't have so many clankers, sure would be a nice place for leave. One of the casinos likes their Zellies."

A few quick barks of laughter and Kix called for another deal. "That's one quick way to lose your cred-shares," the medic noted, eyes intent on his cards.

"Yeah," Fives mused, rubbing one hand over the back of his neck, head tipped back as if in thought. "But it sure as hell would be worth it."

Jesse chuckled. "So that's what you really do on assignment. Fess up—was she pink, like usual?"

"Or red?" Kix added helpfully. "Or purple, or—"

"Or all three?" Jesse finished with a grin.

"Casinos?" The pilot again leaned forward over the table, practically flashing his cards. Fives wondered why Foley was even bothering with the game; going by the number of flimsi pieces with his nuna-scratch of a signature currently scooped close to Kix, he was better off taking his chances out on the front line.

"Like I said—big station. I guess even the Seppies wanted a vacation."

"Guess they finally figured out droids aren't as much fun as a few Zellies," Jesse remarked.

Another round of laughter and the serious business of sabacc began in earnest. Fives' luck, however, seemed stuck in the single digits. Not his night.

He'd definitely pry Tup away for a visit to 79s after the hand was called.

It was Tull who noticed the change, speaking up for the first time since Fives had sat down and as Jesse dealt another card, face down, to Fives' hand.

"What's up?" the sniper asked with a slight nod at the viewscreen set close to the common room's main exit. It wasn't the screen that all of Torrent had gathered around during the trial; that one was propped up in front of a pile of overturned chairs and currently blaring some random civvie talk show.

A shiny in a freshly painted kit was standing at the other, staring at it in consternation. From his seat, Fives could tell a base-wide message had flashed up across the screen, but couldn't make out the details from this distance.

"Oy!" Jesse suddenly barked. The shiny, predictably, jumped. "Share it, eh?"

The clone—with a perfectly regimented haircut and not a tattoo or scar in sight—backpedalled before jerking a thumb at the screen. "We've been pushed back another twenty-four hours."

"_What?_"

Fives was halfway across the room before the others had managed to clear the table. A quick glance at the screen—which typically only listed legion notices—and he saw the updated time chart.

"Fives," called a familiar voice. When he turned, Tup was standing in the doorway to the barracks, bucket in hand and brow furrowed. There was something about his expression that made Fives unclip his own bucket and slip it on. A few blinks, and he saw.

_Ah, fek._

"What's up?" Kix asked, standing at Fives' elbow.

Fives held up a hand, blinking again to open a channel; he could tell the internal comm relays were lit up with chatter, but as much as he'd like to cut in and hear from some of the others, he knew Rex would have the most information.

The captain answered with a gruff, "Not a good time, Fives."

"So it's true?" Fives shot back.

The burst of crackled static, he knew, was the captain's aggravated sigh. "Yes."

"A _resignation, _though?"

"Technically, the Jedi Order is a voluntary organization."

Yeah, right. And he liked bantha patties for breakfast.

"That's the biggest pile of _o'sic _I've ev_—"_

"Fives, if you have a point to this comm, make it."

"Was it forced?"

Another quick burst of static. "No. It's her choice."

The muscles along Fives' jaw tightened to the point of pain; there was something else in Rex's voice that gave Fives pause. "Where are you?"

A lengthy hesitation, then: "Leaving the prison center."

The prison center?

Well, that explained the static. But hells—

"Don't ask, Fives," the captain said.

At the distinct clip to Rex's words, Fives subsided. Any other questions would need to wait. "Copy that, Captain."

Rex ended the transmission without another word and Fives jerked off the helmet, nerves crackling with a sudden surge of temper. The other troopers were staring at him with mixed expressions of interest and alarm.

"Commander Tano resigned from the Order. She's been discharged from the GAR."

Of all the ways he'd debated on how this entire ordeal would end, the commander leaving her Order _by choice_ hadn't been one of them.

"Can she do that?"

Fives swung around. The shiny was looking between them all with an intense sort of puzzlement. "Can Jedi just…do that?"

It took a beat before Kix answered for them. "Guess so." With a grimace that was more of a rictus, he sidestepped Rork and headed back for the sabacc game.

"I'm going to see her off." Fives said it before he fully realized his intention, but then he noticed Tup was at his side with that strange expression still on his face. His brother nodded once and made for the door.

Jesse hesitated before saying, "Me, too," although he went first to the table to stack up his sabacc set.

Kix looked ready to protest, but subsided and pocketed his winnings with a shake of his head.

"Fives." Tup had paused in the door and was looking expectantly back at him.

Fives hesitated, glancing back at the abandoned sabacc game. On a hunch, he stepped back to the table and flipped his cards over before Jesse could grab them. Next to the Idiot and the Three, a Two of Sabers rounded out his last hand.

A perfect Idiot's Array. He would've won the entire pot of the night.

Working around the Jedi, he'd learned to listen to intuition_—_they all had, and more often than not, it was the only thing that kept them alive_—_but _this_...sat wrong in his gut.

With a flick of his wrist, he tossed the cards into the pile Jesse was sweeping up and headed for the door.

* * *

Away from the prison center, Ahsoka let Rex steer her through the base and back onto a speeder bike. She took pillion behind him and tucked her face against the rigid plastoid of his back plating, cool against her cheek.

Any sort of true answer would've been nearly impossible to get, but actually facing Barriss—_that_ had been harder than Ahsoka had expected.

At least Fox didn't know enough of Order rules to refuse giving back her lightsabers.

The night air buffeted her face and lekku and she tried to ignore the passing whirlwind of color and sound as Rex eased the speeder through the base and into the gleaming Coruscanti traffic.

It wasn't until he slowed, then turned into a side alley that she blinked and pulled herself from her thoughts.

"What do you think?" she asked immediately, sitting up and sliding back as he pulled off his helmet and turned so that she could see his profile, distinct even in the alley's dim light.

He shook his head. "I don't understand you Jedi."

Ahsoka wanted to whack him on the shoulder bell, but restrained herself. "I'm not a Jedi anymore."

He shook his head and gestured for her to get off. She scrambled to the alley pavement, shiny and damp with condensation. A wet chill was settling over the night; not that the carefully controlled atmosphere ever got particularly cold, but there was far more air movement on the upper levels than in the oppressive Undercity, and she rubbed at her upper arms through her bracers.

Rex also dismounted and was looking at her carefully. "With all due respect, you'll always be a Jedi. Maybe not in title, but…" He hesitated, taking a moment to clip his helmet to his side. "Where it counts."

Ahsoka opened her mouth but couldn't think of a passable reply.

He studied her for another moment before asking, "What do _you_ think?"

"I don't know." She sighed, grateful to be back on the topic that hung like a tenacious wistie in her mind. "Not much more than I sort of expected. But I'd hoped for _something_ to go by. Considering everything she said in the tribunal chamber, I don't know how to take any of it."

"Ahsoka," he said slowly, "were you watching her?"

She furrowed her brow. "Yes, I was watching her—" But he was moving his hands in a familiar way; signals that she'd grown accustomed to out on the battlefield between the troopers. Her eyes widened at the implication."I…wasn't watching carefully enough, apparently."

Rex glanced up and down the alley before grabbing her shoulder and tugging her closer. "She signaled 'not safe' two times. You should've caught that."

Irritation flared in her chest at the censure in his voice. "I'm not exactly on my best game, lately."

Which only earned her an even sterner look of disapproval. "Ahsoka, if you're going to be out there on your own, you need to be at the top of your game _every moment_."

His voice had a hard edge to it that he used on the shiniest of shinies, and Ahsoka had to bite back a quick retort.

She did, however, glare. "The next time you have to go on the run to save your skin and end up betrayed by one of your best friends, you can lecture me all you want. But until then, would you _please_ not be like this?"

He dropped his gaze immediately and she caught a spark from his mind, as if the ember of him sputtered, enough that she reached out to grip his vambrace.

"Okay, she signaled 'not safe'…" Ahsoka prompted.

"And you saw for yourself the evidence Tarkin presented," he continued. With a frustrated sigh, he pulled his arm away and scrubbed at his blond fuzz. "I don't suppose you saw any other troopers down that night."

"No," she mused, thinking back to the tangle of images from her run through the base. "Well, there were troopers down, about a squad of them outside my cell block, but they were actually semi-conscious when I found them."

"And you _ran_?"

Ahsoka winced at the disbelief in his voice. "At first, I thought Anakin had managed it. But after I saw the troopers...well. And from there it just went from bad to really bad."

Rex nodded slowly; she could tell from his expression he was digesting the information and likely fitting it against the reports he had access to. "Fox mentioned there were two other troopers killed at the comms relay."

Ahsoka mulled over what she knew of the prison center, which wasn't much."I…honestly don't know where that is," she admitted.

"South side, Sector B-117," Rex automatically replied.

Ahsoka peered up at his familiar face. "There's something else you're not telling me about all this."

He hesitated. "Fives had some intel. How good was Barriss at slicing?"

She wrinkled her brow. "Slicing? To my knowledge, not very. Why?"

"Someone sliced into the system and made sure the entire center was dark for about an hour that night."

"An hour?" She folded her arms in front of her, mind churning but unable to settle on anything in particular. The Force, behind it all, gusted in little, breathy waves. "Long time to set things up."

"Not the worst part. Our system has safeguards against this sort of thing, so whoever managed it had extremely high clearance to not set off every alarm we've got in there."

"Well that's…" she blew out a long breath, "…encouraging."

Rex eyed her. "Whatever it is you're thinking about getting your hands into, you need to consider how deep this is. I don't think Offee could have broken the system so effectively without assistance."

"No, it doesn't sound like it." She paused, again considering his words, and cocked a small smile at him. "How'd you guess?"

To her surprise, he smiled back, and there was a warmth in his gaze that somehow stemmed the chill of the night. "I know you." But then he added, wryly, "That's what worries me."

She rolled her eyes. "Thanks for the vote of confidence."

"Just….think it out, kid, before jumping into something. Alright?"

She nodded, but her mind was already leaping ahead again. What had Barriss gotten into? And if there was someone else involved, why had she so readily taken all the blame?

"Ahsoka."

"Hm? Oh, yeah. I will."

He shook his head. He looked utterly exasperated.

"Look at it this way, Rexster." Something faltered in her. When was the last time she'd called him that? It seemed like years. A lot had changed in recent months. "Now you'll only have one crazy Jedi's back to watch."

Her attempt at humor didn't have the intended effect; he dropped his gaze and rubbed at his helmet in the way she'd recognized as a bit of a nervous twitch. Which was an intensely odd behavior to associate the captain with, but she knew him better than most.

"We need you out there, Ahsoka, and not just for your abilities as a Jedi. This all cuts deeper than I think you realize."

Ahsoka winced at the baldly stated words. He said them with a soft conviction, and she had to force herself not to throw her arms around him and apologize all over again. Considering his earlier reaction and his remarkable imitation of a GAR statue, he probably wouldn't appreciate a repeat.

"Can you understand why, though?" she asked, her voice just as soft.

"I do. And I respect your choice. I may not fully agree with it, but I respect it."

He met her gaze then, and the sweep of emotion there surprised her. He was the most stoic man she'd ever known—and there were plenty of Jedi who could vie for that title—but this...hurt.

In the odd silence between them, she finally looked away and only then fully noticed their surroundings. It wasn't just an alley; it was a dump of an alley.

"Did you intend to have this conversation here? Because it looks straight out of one of Jesse's holo-murder-mysteries."

That finally brought a snort of laughter out of him.

"Yes." He straightened and turned, gesturing for her to follow. "There's one last duty you'll need to dispense with."

"I'm afraid to ask," she muttered, staring at the grungy door he'd headed toward.

"Trust me one last time," he said, tone suddenly gruff. "You deserve a proper sendoff."

* * *

Obi-Wan found his former Padawan where he'd expected, although he had to steel himself before facing the inevitable.

"Give her time, Anakin," he said, after palming open the door to Ahsoka's Temple quarters and taking a moment to watch the young man's stilted, droid-like movements around the tiny room.

Only one of the small lamps was lit, and the window along the far side reflected a mirror-image of them both between each wide-slatted blind. Tiny winking lights gave a hint of the night and the city beyond, a swirl of color that seemed entirely incongruent against the reflected bare brown stone and the dark-robed young man collecting a short lifetime of gifts and oddities.

Anakin _couldn't_ take this without physical pain. It was part of his very nature.

It also didn't take much guesswork to know Anakin had received notice of Obi-Wan's unique requisition, as well as its intended use. An unusual blessing from the Council, but Ahsoka had earned every credit. Anakin's _reaction_ however, was an entirely different kettle of colo clawfish stew.

Obi-Wan winced at the spike of unveiled mental fury Anakin shot his way, but—surprisingly—he held his tongue. Anakin _had_ matured a great deal over the last few years, even if he didn't exactly conform to the Council's expectations. It wasn't easy bearing the burden of the titled Chosen One.

But then, Obi-Wan wasn't entirely certain about the Council's expectations, either—not after the last year. Not after Maul.

"She will find her way," Obi-Wan finally said.

Ahsoka had left behind a surprisingly large collection of odds-and-ends, and Anakin handled each with a quiet sort of grief. It was deeper than the anger, older and somehow stronger; the deceptive undercurrent beneath the plaintive ripples of a river.

There was a little smiling Pantoran goddess of polished blue stone; a rough-cut metallic medallion inscribed with what suspiciously looked like an old Wookiee charm; three bright river stones, rolled smooth; a slightly tattered scarf; all of them more than likely gifts and not merely trinkets, Obi-Wan realized.

For all that she'd been a dedicated Padawan, she'd forged close friendships and loyalties across the galaxy. It wasn't, perhaps, the impartiality that most Jedi strove for, but it had worked out all the better in the end, he realized. She would need those ties now, far more so than any detached neutrality at some future negotiation table.

Anakin remained silent until he'd placed the last keepsake—a carved bit of wroshyr-wood that looked suspiciously like a miniature trooper helmet—in the small box atop her low pallet. He pressed a keyed access and it closed with a soft hiss of hydraulics.

"You're making this entire thing about her."

Obi-Wan stared at him, nonplussed for a moment. "It _is_ about her, Anakin. It comes down to her choice, regardless of what any of us would prefer."

Anakin's jaw worked and Obi-Wan saw a dangerous glint in his eyes, but he wasn't quick enough to stave off Anakin's response. "Are you as blind as they are, Obi-Wan?"

"As blind as you, perhaps. There isn't any reason to—"

"She would never have had any reason to leave if the Council had just believed her—believed _me_!" Anakin shot back. He ran one hand through his unkempt hair and turned in place, staring around at the tiny room. "They threw her away, just because it was convenient!"

"Anakin—"

But now that he was speaking, Anakin couldn't—or wouldn't—stop. "Is this what we are, now? Is this the sort of thing we're supposed to be? Is this why I became a Jedi—so I could accuse innocent people of murder, just because it was easier?"

Obi-Wan winced, but couldn't deny the truths behind Anakin's acidity. There were members of the Council who would want to sweep this away and move forward—as the Jedi way instructed—but surely there had to be a bitter lesson to ingest because of all this.

And as Master Yoda had stated, they couldn't afford to lose any more of their numbers to the increasingly demanding pull of the dark side.

"You know the answer to that, Anakin," he answered, putting a gentle weight behind his words.

"Actually," Anakin held up his mech-hand, then clenched it into a tight fist, "no. I don't." He shook his head and turned to the window, his shadow falling against it and the lights of the city-planet suddenly brighter beyond the transparisteel.

"I believe you do." Obi-Wan stepped to his side and ignored the younger man's derisive snort. "What was it that you told me once? That she was well-suited to be your Padawan; probably better suited than you had been, as mine?"

Anakin only crossed his arms over his chest and stared out into the night.

"You need to trust Ahsoka and her instincts. You've trained her well."

If Anakin took the compliment, it was grudgingly; he didn't move a muscle, otherwise.

"I know you want to blame the Council. For good reason," Obi-Wan added, holding up his hand when Anakin half-turned toward him. "But I also want to remind you of the position we all are currently in. What is worse: fighting the enemy we know, or the one we do not know?"

Anakin's expression darkened further. "The Sith."

Obi-Wan was quiet a moment, then carefully noted, "I doubt it's escaped the Council's notice that two Jedi have fallen within about a year's span. Yet both seemed focused on your particular sphere of influence."

Anakin turned fully to glare at Obi-Wan, his gaze unnerving in its intensity. "Don't."

"It's something that must be considered—"

"Krell's body counts had stacked up before Umbara."

"Not enough for overt concern."

"No. They were just conveniently weighed against his victories."

Obi-Wan sighed. _As were yours_, _Anakin_, he silently noted. _At least before you adjusted to the mantle of command._

Which was likely true for all Jedi, himself included. Even if Obi-Wan understood the necessity, leading his men to death—over and over—haunted him in ways he couldn't fully grasp.

"Yet his betrayal occurred while in command of your troops."

"I remember, Obi-Wan." Anakin's voice shook with an anger Obi-Wan knew he _should_ address, but wouldn't—at least, not now. There was another mental spike of fury, although this one had a coating of frustrated impotence.

Obi-Wan was silent a moment; they'd both lost men—too many men—to Krell. At Dogma's court-martial, Anakin had objected loudly to the trooper's sentence and had even managed to go on record that he only regretted not being the one to execute Krell himself.

Not exactly the most pleasant image for the holorecord.

"From the evidence surrounding Barriss, she explicitly singled out Ahsoka," Obi-Wan finally said.

"Barriss and Ahsoka were close friends."

"Yes," Obi-Wan replied mildly. "But Barriss shows clear signs of being influenced by some other source. You heard her, Anakin; that was a lot of propaganda spouted back to us."

Anakin shook his head irritably, as if brushing off the thought like so many biteflies. "Put a voice-modifier on her and she'd sound just like Dooku."

"Exactly."

Anakin stared out at the city lights for another long moment. Then, surprisingly, smirked. "You just proved me right."

Obi-Wan furrowed his brow. "In what?"

"That this isn't just about her."

Obi-Wan reminded himself that rolling one's eyes set a poor example.

"No, it never was. But what I'm trying to encourage is caution."

Anakin gave him a sidelong glance. "By your reasoning, Maul went after you because of me."

Obi-Wan allowed a wry smile at that. "It may not be _all_ about you, Anakin," he replied dryly.

That earned at least a half-smile in return.

Obi-Wan pressed forward on that small victory. "Regarding Ahsoka, I do hope you consider her personal decision without placing it squarely on the shoulders of others—yours included." He paused, noticing how quickly Anakin's expression darkened. "She is an intelligent young woman, and I doubt she'll stray far from the Jedi path."

"Why not?" Anakin snapped, his mood having shifted as quickly as a Paqwe out for a bargain. "There's nothing for her here."

"If you truly believe that, you aren't giving her—or even yourself—enough credit."

Anakin only sighed and turned from the window, stooping to lift the box from the pallet before taking the two necessary strides to the door. Waving it open, he paused only long enough to glance over his shoulder, and his next words were rueful and quietly sincere—but not bitter, as Obi-Wan had expected. "I don't know what to believe anymore."

And then he was gone and Obi-Wan was alone with his thoughts.

_You're not the only one, Anakin._

* * *

**A/N**: That last little gift, the carved trooper helmet, is a happy nod to a brilliant artist and storyteller. If you're not following _Star Wars: Destinies_ on tumblr, do so. It's amazing!


	8. Chapter 7

**A/N**: Rounds and rounds of gratitude and applause to **laloga**, who graciously stepped in as an absolutely marvelous beta while impoeia is away!

Do note this whole chapter takes place in a bar. Expect that general line of thought. As we saw from the 'fresher graffiti in S6:Orders, those 501st boys like to have their fun.

* * *

"So I says to her, 'Baby, you and me could really—'"

"You never even met a girl."

—Clone Cadets Cutup and Droidbait

* * *

The steady thump of music surely gave it away.

"Rex—" Ahsoka managed as he led her down a short hallway to an interior door.

A roar of sound cut off any other words and Rex didn't bother stifling a surge of amusement—and no small bit of pride—at the sight. 79s, that much-loved and bizarrely military-sanctioned clone club, was stuffed full of the 501st, signature blue and white crammed into every corner, barstool, and booth. They were even hanging off the balconies, every level, all the way to the fourth floor.

Beside him, Ahsoka flinched and grasped her montrals, eyes widening to an almost comical size.

But a _real_ smile was on her lips.

Rex had to give due credit to his men. They knew how to throw a party.

"Are you _serious_?" she mouthed up at him—although her voice was drowned out completely—before she was abruptly tugged into a gaggle of pilots. By the forest of vambraces and raised glasses, he knew he'd be able to watch her progress through the crowd just by the toasts alone—and made a mental note to key an order to all the men. They could drink. _She_ could not.

Fives appeared at his side immediately. "Well played for ten minutes, eh?" he shouted over the din.

"We're the 501st. If we can't move out in one, it's back to basics 'til they're all crying like a batch of shinies."

Fives snorted a laugh. "Yeah, but we've even got maintenance here." He waved at the unarmored group wedged between a bank of tables, every one of them looking a bit dazed and bruised beneath the plastoid-covered mass of their brothers. "And you know those guys."

Rex shook his head and pushed forward through the crowd after Ahsoka. He trusted his men, but he still didn't want her out of sight just yet.

Fives, however, seemed determined to stick at his side like a solar-dried mynock. "You left a lot out, Rex."

"Not much to tell."

"So you just marched back to Fox for nerf cookies and giggles," Fives shot back, deadpan.

Rex came to a stop, both because he knew Fives would be a tenacious son of a droid until he got answers—and because a cluster of Roller Company had linked arms in front of him and started singing a Herglic shanty. Badly.

By the sound of it, they'd managed to average a drink per minute from the moment of Fives' call to arms.

"Fives, this isn't the time or place."

He really shouldn't have been surprised when he somehow found himself out on the speeder pad. Fives came by the ARC designation honestly.

"Alright," Rex bit off, crossing his arms over his chestplate and lowering his voice. His ears were ringing already; ironic, maybe, that his brothers could be louder in one bar than an entire battlefield. "She turned down the Council's offer for Knighthood—"

"She was going to be Knighted? Fekking hells, why didn't she—"

"Fives," Rex growled. He glared until the ARC subsided. "I get the feeling she thinks something else is wrong." To put it lightly. Kriff it all, he'd give almost anything to erase the last three days from existence.

"Wrong with what?"

Rex only lifted his eyebrows. It wasn't like they hadn't discussed the issue—not even four hours ago—in the barracks' common-room. It was also _not_ something he planned on discussing in a place crawling with military, along with the occasional surveillance droid.

"Alright. Good point," Fives conceded. The ARC wasn't daft, but he also wasn't going to be swayed. "Why the prison sector?"

"Why do you think?"

A slow, predatory smile cracked Fives' face as he put the pieces together. "Meeting with former friends. I should've known."

Rex shook his head. Yeah, _he_ should've known, too. But the idea of her digging into any of the Order's secret mess made his skin crawl, mostly because he didn't think it stopped at the Temple's doorstep. Offee might've been the traitor, but Tarkin's evidence didn't stack up. Considering what he'd just witnessed down in that high security cell, this was…bad.

Very, very bad.

And part of his brain was still digesting just how _big _that new underground GAR facility was, like all those meters and meters of durasteel corridors and unlabeled rooms were an unspoken promise that this war would go on and on and on regardless if there were any Jedi left to fight it.

His blood ran cold at the thought.

"She doesn't need to be sticking her neck out anywhere, not after all this. I respect her decision, but I can't support it as some other mission to find out why one Jedi would betray another."

His words did not sit well with Fives. The ARC's brow furrowed, dark as a storm on Kamino. "You really think that, Rex? As much as you know her? As much as you know Skywalker?"

Rex wouldn't budge. "Not if she's alone out there."

Fives stared at him in disbelief and Rex wondered why in all hells Fives and Kenobi thought she'd just carry on as some independent agent. Were they _that_ blind and deaf—especially if some other unknown wanted her out of the way?

"_Get off Coruscant_." Offee's words rang through his head and he had to fight back the urge to wade through the mass of armor bodies at his back, find Ahsoka, and keep her six until the day his bones crumbled to dust and blew away.

Rex stepped close to Fives and lowered his voice to a bare hiss. "This is bigger than you're giving it credit for." He hesitated, glancing past Fives at the hazy Coruscant skyline. The image of her in that warehouse—unconscious, dirty, bruised, and so tiny—flashed through his mind, vivid even now. "No one will have her back out there, especially if she's digging in places that don't need to be messed with."

Fives snorted—which only irritated Rex further. "You know her better than that. And it's not like she hasn't been on her own most of the last five months, anyway."

"Not true. She's had backup on call for most every assignment."

"Not _every_." Fives shook his head, but that predatory gleam was back in his gaze. "She'd be fun to keep up with. Wonder if they'd let me have a special assignment."

_That_ thought didn't settle well, either. "Not likely," Rex ground out.

Fives' eyebrows rose and his grin reappeared. "Then I guess I have a goal after the war."

Rex snorted, although his fingers were digging into his vambraces hard enough to bend the edges. "You keep dreaming."

Fives tapped his fingers thoughtfully against his blue-lined bucket, clipped, as always, to his side. Like Rex, he wouldn't even go off to 79s without his full kit, minus blasters—although Rex could only assume he would at least sneak a flash bang in, just for kicks. "Yeah. I'll do that," is all the ARC finally said, voice uncharacteristically thoughtful. Then, with all his usual abruptness, he tipped a salute to Rex and winked. "Better make the most of my night."

And disappeared back into the noise and jam of bodies.

Rex stared after him, thrown momentarily by the ARC's change of mood—but Fives always had been as mercurial as Kamino's southern subsidence, unorthodox yet annoyingly brilliant enough that Rex wondered why the hells he ever tried to have a conversation with the man.

But he knew why.

No matter how crazy his twists of logic, Fives always managed to dig up the best—although oddest—intel. He had kept Torrent out of some fine and bloody messes, and even if it was all simply Fives' duty as a soldier, Rex still owed him more than he could ever repay.

Umbara was only the start of it, really.

The acrid-sweet stench of tibanna tasted bitter in his mouth as he turned away from the Coruscant skyways and made his way back into the bar. He still needed to remind his men that Ahsoka was not to be offered a drink, not even if they wanted to toast every past victory from here to Jabba's Palace.

Although he might have a few, himself.

It'd been that kind of day.

* * *

"To Moorja!"

"Felucia!"

"_Kamino_!"

"Saleucami!"

"To Geonosis!" shouted...someone over the cacophony of music and too many voices. Ahsoka was having a hard time following who called what, squashed as she was between at least thirty sets of blue and white armor.

"First or Second?"

"Who gives a flying fek?" crowed another.

The crowd around her rumbled with appreciative laughter and a drink was plunked into her hand—only to be lifted away a moment later by Rex, who seemed to have picked up the uncanny knack of appearing at her side the moment one of the men "forgot" his orders.

"You know I'm a Naboo citizen now, right?" she yelled up at him over the noise of all the troopers. She wasn't sure if it was an overload of the men's high spirits in her mind or if the events of the last three days had finally worn her down to a semi-hysterical status, but she was feeling distinctly light-headed.

His brow knitted as he stared down at her. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"Padmé as queen at fourteen. Legal definition of adulthood. They had to change the laws." _The things learned while being entertained by Naboo's most-cherished former queen… _She shoved a finger at the drink in Rex's hand. "I'm legal to drink!"

Typical Rex, he scowled down at her like a particularly stern librarian. Jocasta Nu would dance with glee if she had an army of Rexes to breathe down Initiates' necks. "Not on Coruscant, you're not, kid. And not on my watch." And over her protests, he downed it all in two swallows.

Okay, not _quite_ like a librarian.

His men all bellowed again and before another drink could be shoved into her hands, Rex scooped a clone out of the crowd.

"KP duty until further notice, corporal." The hapless corporal—Geiger, from engineering, Ahsoka remembered—groaned. "Captain Brinson will be notified." And Rex smacked him on his back, hard enough that Geiger-from-engineering shot forward to land in the arms of his whooping brothers.

Apparently Rex was serious about the no-drinks thing.

She wrinkled her nose up at him. "You really are no fun."

When he met her gaze, there was enough heat there that she suddenly felt _really_ light-headed. What had crawled up _his_ armor? "Orders are orders. If you want to have a drink so bad, Naboo shouldn't be too hard to find with that shuttle of yours. I'll join you for a pint when the war's over."

"But all the fun is _here_."

"From what I hear, Theed is nice this time of year."

She snorted a laugh. "You really expect me to go to _Naboo_?"

Rex shrugged. "Why not? You just said you're a citizen." His brow furrowed. "How'd _that _happen, anyway?"

She grimaced at the memory. "Padmé. When the Order cast me out, the Shilian representative refused to recognize my citizenship. And since you have to apply and be processed to get Coruscanti citizen status, that left me...well."

In legal limbo, essentially stripped of rights. Funny how legislation changed almost without notice while a war was on.

Rex's eyes narrowed as the ramifications settled in.

This side of the trial, those ramifications sent icy prickles of 'what if' down her spine. Without Padme's efforts, she could only imagine what kind of representation she would've been granted by the GAR—or if the right to trial would've stood at all. It was all too much of a play on legality, too much of a urnsor'is-spider web of half-truths.

If Anakin hadn't found Ventress...

Her montrals ached and her eyes itched and she _knew_ that thought didn't need to be finished.

It wasn't even the thought of execution. Death was always...present_, especially_ for a Jedi. The idea of sacrifice was as constant as the weight and pulse of her lightsabers.

But the strum of Anakin's mind—heavy and pained and spiking between emotions with enough speed to give her whiplash—pushed like a pike against the base of her skull. Even now, wherever he'd gone off to—and she could tell he'd left the Temple—she still felt that simmering overlay, as if the Master-Padawan bond hadn't been broken; rather flayed into something raw and wounded.

She'd made her decision—and really, it was the only one she could make. But the consequences...

"Ahsoka?" She felt fingers at her elbow and Rex's head close to hers, so close that his stubble-covered chin brushed against her montrals, painfully rough against the cartilage along the juncture of her lek. Bizarrely, that rush of sensation steadied her.

And the fact that when she met his gaze, his brown eyes were concerned and earnest enough that she could've curled up in them and stayed there.

"I'm fine," she said automatically, then forced an impish grin up at him.

She _had_ to do this.

Not that Rex needed to know exactly _what_, at the moment. Force take it, _she_ wasn't even sure, yet.

"So Padmé convinced her queen to grant me political asylum," she managed to finish. And reaching around him, she deftly plucked a drink out of Jesse's hand, who had unwarily stepped into range. With a little lift to toast her former captain, she downed it before he could grab it.

Or she tried to.

Over all the coughing, she was pretty sure she hear him grouse, "That's what you get," and from the lack of liquid on her boots, she was also pretty sure he'd grabbed the mug from her limp fingers—although she couldn't see much of anything through the tears streaming from her eyes.

How could Jesse _drink_ that?

When she finally managed to get upright, she doubled over again when Rex—helpfully—slapped her back with more force than he really needed to.

"You okay, Comm—ah, Miss Tano?" Jesse asked. His familiar, tattooed face swam into view, although his mouth twitched from fighting back a laugh.

"It's Ahsoka," she choked out. "Why would you _drink_ that? It tastes worse than engine oil."

"Because he stripped his tastebuds off on his first leave after graduation." Fives had popped out of the crowd and looped an arm around Jesse's neck. Somehow, Ahsoka wasn't surprised to see a deep-pink Zeltron attached to Fives' other side, complete with purple hair and a spangled dress short enough to make leaning over a hazard. "Ten rounds of Toydarian whiskey with a Weequay. You can guess how that went."

"I held my own!" Jesse retorted.

"Almost all the way to the 'fresher."

Rex, though, was peering at her with interest. "You've...tasted engine oil?"

Ahsoka glared. "With Anakin as my Master? When I wasn't slicing through droids, I was putting them back together." She poked his chestplate. "And who was the one stuck fixing the _Twilight _whenever we crash-landed on some other mudball?"

Rex conceded with a thoughtful tip of his head.

"That," Jesse put in, with a one-track mind and eyes focused on his liberated drink, "is _not _engine oil." He made a grab for the mug from Rex's hand and failed miserably. From the distinct clip of his words, Ahsoka could only guess how many pints he'd already knocked down. "Kashyyyk ale. Summer of '82. I have excellent taste."

Rex took a careful sniff and shoved the tankard back into Jesse's hands. "Yeah, and I'm the admiral's uncle. That's Gungan mud-stout or I'm a day out of Kamino."

Over Fives' sharp laugh, Jesse looked forlornly into the depths of his drink and, with a shrug, drained the mug. "Good enough, anyway," he bemoaned after a coughing wheeze.

* * *

"So you're the Jedi?" a feminine voice asked from behind her. After being passed around the entirety of the legion, Ahsoka had finally found a low-backed booth—miraculously vacant—and slumped down for a moment. She loved the 501st. But as one cheering, drunken mass, they were a bit much to handle.

It didn't help matters that her head and montrals felt like they'd just taken a few rounds with a grumpy bantha.

"_Ex_-Jedi," corrected another, a throaty contralto.

Ahsoka had noticed a wide variety of clientele filtering into the club as the largest press of troopers filtered out—to no one's shock, maintenance and bridge personnel were the first to go—and her men_—formerly _her men—were more than happy to accommodate the new arrivals. Most of them seemed to be both expected and welcomed with drinks raised high or arms wrapped around curvaceous waists.

It was a rare side to see of the 501st.

For example, she never would've guessed Coric was so...hands on. His lap had been full of a green-skinned Twi'lek for at least the past hour, and he'd barely come up for air.

She knew she shouldn't stare, but it was all strangely fascinating. That was _Coric _smushed beneath all that green.

"That's me," she replied easily, glancing over her shoulder at the two women leaned against her booth's synth-leather backrest. One was Fives' pink Zeltron and the other pale-skinned, dark-haired, and vaguely Human—maybe some Zabraki in there, as she had a couple of horns—and with an almost choreographed grace, they slid into the booth, one on either side of Ahsoka.

_Well, great_. Ahsoka forced a smile that probably came out a grimace.

"The boys all say you're a war hero," the Human said, looking Ahsoka up and down with interest as she crossed her legs at the knee, blue dress pulling tight across her thighs.

"_Heroine_," corrected the Zeltron; she'd been the throaty contralto. With a stunningly wide—and white—smile, she slid a wide-rimmed glass in front of Ahsoka. The drink was as deep a glowing pink as the Zeltron.

Ahsoka tried gamely to keep the smile. Social niceties were never her thing. She doubted they ever _would_ be. "Only what was necessary."

"Oh?" Pinkie swirled her own drink—a sickly, radioactive green—and cocked one manicured eyebrow at Ahsoka. "I doubt that."

"The stories those boys share…" The other clinked her choice beverage—a sedate amber in a thick-bottomed tumbler—against the pink thing in front of Ahsoka.

"Are probably classified," Ahsoka heard herself reply.

The flash of appreciative humor from Pinkie's mind warmed her considerably in Ahsoka's opinion, although the Zeltron hid a smile behind a sip of her drink.

"Even better," the Human shot back, with a practiced, sly curve of her lips.

Ahsoka decided she could play, too. Sliding one finger around the rim of the pink thing, she remarked, "They probably leave out the best details."

"I doubt a little Jedi like you would know what to _do_ with details."

Her temper frayed just a tad more. "Hot, sticky nights." _And so many bugs_. "All those blasters to polish." _Their favorite past-time._ "Explosions to watch." _Too many on their own side._ "Although I wiped the floor with them every time out on the mats."

Well, maybe not _every_ time, but that didn't need to be mentioned. She would miss all those sparring lessons. Especially with Anakin.

Pinkie nearly choked on her drink. To her credit, even her cough was attractive. "I...will never look at the Jedi Temple in the same way." The bright spark of startled glee from the Zeltron was as pink as her skin.

The Human sniffed. "I heard you were just a kid when you went out there? Still are just a bit of a thing, aren't you?"

Ahsoka bristled, but Pinkie spoke first. "Oh, please, Vel. You were fifteen."

There was a sudden surge of vitriol from the Human—who looked at least a hard-aged thirty—as her red-painted lips twisted in distaste at Pinkie. With a sweep of her hair, she slid out of the booth and threaded off through the crowd.

"Fifteen?" Ahsoka couldn't help but ask.

Pinkie gave a noncommittal tilt of her head. In seconds, the Human had wrapped herself around a seemingly random shiny and dragged him away, to the shiny's utter befuddlement.

"Her name is Velma Turchik. Ex….hm, forced _attendere_. She's come a long way," the Zeltron said, although she leaned back slightly to track the other woman through the crowd. "Don't mind her. She's just jealous. The boys all love you."

"I was their commander," Ahsoka noted, rolling her eyes. "Not competition."

Pinkie gave an elegant shrug of her bare shoulders. "She's not exactly civilian, either." At Ahsoka's furrowed brow, she added, "Military contractor. Fascinating woman, actually. You might want to keep an eye on her." Her smile turned wicked. "And she does love her clones."

Ahsoka winced and suddenly felt sorry for the shiny.

"Beité," Pinkie said.

It took Ahsoka a moment to realize the Zeltron was introducing herself. "Ahsoka. Ahsoka Tano."

Beité's blinding smile reappeared. "Yes, I know. You were all over the news today. And yesterday."

Ahsoka nearly groaned. She'd forgotten that fact.

Beité winked. "Nothing like a bit of infamy to make the holojournalists froth."

"Bei!" shouted a familiar voice, and Ahsoka sensed more than saw Fives peeling out of the crowd to land unceremoniously at Ahsoka's side, although he grabbed the pink drink with more grace than he should've. "You haven't even tried it."

Ahsoka was startled to realize he was talking to her. "Er. What?" She glanced between the glowing thing and Fives, who looked sincerely morose—if she hadn't felt the buzz of his mind against hers. "That's from you?"

Fives patted her on the montrals and Ahsoka fought back the urge to whack him on the head. "Have to take care of my favorite ex-commander."

"Non-alcoholic," the Zeltron made sure to note, with another wink at Ahsoka. "You're just a kid."

_Kid? Really?_ Ahsoka threw up her hands—and reached back to grab Rex's drink, since he'd decided to sneak up on her again. "You people realize I've fought General Grievous. Alone. _Twice. _Right?"

"And damn near got yourself killed," Rex snapped, making a grab for the tankard.

She pushed it out of reach—only for Fives to snatch it up. The ARC, ever-quick on his feet, slipped out of the booth and around to the Zeltron's side, a wide, smug grin on his face. Beité humored him with a pat on the cheek as he handed the tankard back to Rex. "Our Ahsoka? No way. She'll outlast us all. Five kids and a pack of strills."

"_Five?"_

Even Beité seemed horrified. She pulled back to mock-glare at him. "You realize what a girl goes through for all that?"

Fives waggled his eyebrows. "Nope. But I can help out."

Beité smacked him on the chest.

Ahsoka would've kicked him in the shin if she hadn't known it would hurt her far worse than him. Sith-cursed armor. "Just because I'm not a Jedi anymore doesn't mean I'm going off to play house," she grumbled, irritated at the lot of them. Really, was this whole concept _that_ hard for them to grasp?

Rex, unfazed, settled into Fives' vacated place. "Why shouldn't you? Like you said, Naboo—"

"I am _not_ going to Naboo." Her glare, however, only made the corners of his mouth twitch.

"There's that boy from Onderon," Rex kept on.

"Really not wanting to stick around the Senate District, either."

As for Lux... At least he hadn't been called to jury over her, but after Steela's death, there was something odd and hollow between them, and she couldn't really wrap her mind around it. But then, the whole Onderon mission had left her feeling uncomfortably empty, enough so that she knew exactly why Master Yoda had sent her to Ilum.

"The District isn't _so_ bad, you know," Beité decided to point out.

Ahsoka stared at her.

Those manicured eyebrows rose. "Ah, yes. Your trial. That _would_ be awkward."

"If you're looking for _real_ men," Fives put in, with an almost feral grin, "try Mandalore. Heard it's...wild over there right now."

"_Fives,_" growled Rex, ever the killjoy.

Mandalore _was_ an option. An intriguing one. Ahsoka peered up at Rex. "You really want me to live the boring life, don't you?"

"Boring?" asked a new voice. Coric, a slender bottle in-hand and the green Twi'lek draped along his arm, slid into the other side of the booth. "Why would _you_ settle for boring?"

Ahsoka waved a hand at the medic, glad for a voice of reason. "Exactly."

"You can find boring any day, but not among the Republic's finest_,_" the Twi'lek put in with a lilting purr. At Coric's self-satisfied smirk, Ahsoka rolled her eyes."Oh, Fives_," _the Twi'lek went on_, "_Lyl sends her love."

Fives winked at her. "Tullin, you are, as always, as beautiful as the Dorumaan sea."

Ahsoka actually expected at least a flicker of outrage from Fives' Zeltron—but instead, there was only a distinct flare of amusement. When Beité caught her watching, the Zeltron flashed another smile and pulled Fives around for a very thorough kiss.

"Ugh," another arrival said—this time, Tup, grabbing a nearby chair and swinging it around to straddle it. "Get a room, you too."

"What _are _you planning on doing?" Coric asked Ahsoka, ignoring the show going on next to her.

Although no one at the table really shifted their attention, she could feel them all lean toward her, mentally, with an intensity that was almost unnerving. Even the Zeltron and Fives seemed intrigued, despite their current occupation.

But what _could_ she say?

"I…. I'm not exactly sure." Demurring wasn't her strong suit, so she pulled a grimace up at Rex. "There's always the Refugee Relief Movement. Nice and boring. You'd love it."

He took a swig of his drink. "Yup."

"What about those...Altisians?" Coric persisted.

Ahsoka blinked, truly startled. He actually _remembered_ them?

"Master Altis," Rex said thoughtfully. "He's still technically Jedi, right?"

Tup's brow was furrowed in confusion. "Altis? Altisian? What's that?"

Surprisingly, Rex answered for her. "Altisian Jedi. Kind of a...different sect of Jedi."

The Twi'lek—Tullin, Ahsoka remembered—was glancing between them all, tattoo-frosted head-tails swaying. "Jedi have different..._sects?_"

Ahsoka wasn't sure if she liked the direction of the conversation. Discussing the intricacies of the Order, in a club, surrounding by civilians and troopers and the stench of sweat and too much alcohol, it all seemed—well, heretical. "Sort of. From what I know—which isn't much, really—Master Altis didn't agree with every tenant held by the Jedi Order. So he...sort of...started a new one."

Put simplistically. _Really_ simplistically.

...But that _was_ an option—one she hadn't yet considered. The mission alongside Master Altis on JanFathal had been educating and illuminating on a variety of levels.

"What's so different about them?" Tup asked, intrigued.

"Some minor things—and a couple major."

But Tup, Coric, and Tullin were looking at her with avid interest, and she could tell Rex was listening carefully, his whole body tense despite the tankard he was steadily downing.

Tullin seemed to sense her reticence and flicked her fingers dismissively. "The Jedi and their troopers freed Ryloth and fight for my sisters and alongside my brothers every time the Separatists return. That is all I need to know."

"I want to know," Coric, of course, immediately interjected.

Ahsoka sighed. "Just...differences. I remember something about Masters having multiple Padawans."

"Del mentioned Master Altis was married," Coric said. Del, Ahsoka knew, was one of the very few veterans of Geonosis left in Torrent. He also had a lady friend among one of the GAR's outside shipping contractors who had the best spacer stories to share—especially since the lady was technically an ex-smuggler. Not that the GAR seemed to care.

"Yeah, that too," Ahsoka said.

"Are those...important reasons to form a sect?" Tullin asked. The Twi'lek radiated an innocent curiosity, and Ahsoka realized she'd never really _talked_ with civilians before about her Order—_former_ Order. Not in any detail.

She fiddled with the pink drink's long-stemmed base. "According to the Order, yes. For a lot of reasons."

"But I don't understand," Tullin said, with a little shiver of her headtails.

"I never understood that about you Jedi," Beité spoke up, having surfaced long enough to put her two credits in—although Fives had other ideas. He seemed fully entranced with the back of Beité's ear."Why not enjoy the pleasures offered by a beating heart? A lifetime is too short not to truly _live_."

That was rich, considering what the Jedi had done for thousands of years to keep the peace. "Trust me," she shot back irritably, "Jedi 'live' plenty." _And die plenty, too._

"Ah, but do you kiss? Make love?"

Ahsoka felt her cheeks burning. "We're pretty busy," she snapped. "War to fight and all." Why she was letting a _Zeltron_ of all people get under her skin, she wasn't sure.

"The boys seem to handle it," Beité, of course, had to say, just as Rex decided to take offense. Again.

"_We_?" He turned in his seat to stare at her, incredulous. "We're all here because _you _left, remember?"

Ahsoka's temper finally snapped. "Fine. _You_!" She smacked him on the shoulder bell, loud enough that a few other troopers glanced at their table. "I'm _not _a Jedi, I _don't _really want to talk about it, I _have _been kissed, so would everyone please _lay off_?"

Silence greeted the end of her little tirade, and with a groan, she propped her elbows on the table and rubbed at her forehead.

"Ahsoka," Coric finally said, in the clipped, no-nonsense tone of a medic considering a particularly irascible patient, "when was the last time you ate or slept?"

It took her a moment to remember. "A few days." She'd caught a nap in the GAR prison center, that first go around. It really did feel like an eternity ago. And food hadn't really been on her mind, not with either the stench of the Undercity in her nose or shocktroopers hovering at her lek.

"_Days_?"

Ahsoka winced at Beité and Tullin's horrified response. Right. They didn't know Jedi. "It's not—"

"Not acceptable," Coric finished for her. When she rolled her eyes, he leaned over the table and put all the force of his medic's voice into his words. "You need food. _And_ rest. And don't argue," he added when she opened her mouth.

Rex had already conjured a serving droid seemingly by the sheer power of will and ordered food for the entire table. At least they left her alone for a moment; Tullin fluttered over a non-existent scar on Coric's cheek and Tup extolled the virtues of a new kit mod to Rex.

Maybe she _did_ just need food. Her head still ached and the Force still felt, at best, like a badly tuned holoreceiver through all her senses—and at worst, like a hurricane was trying to blow through a drain pipe. And the thought of crawling somewhere and sleeping off the nightmare of the past three days sounded like a meditative gift from the Spire of Tranquility itself.

But the simple reality of never seeing any of these men after this night… Nope, she wasn't going anywhere. Not until they had all wandered back to their barracks.

"So…" Fives began, pulling Beité close and nuzzling his nose against her neck. Ahsoka wondered why they _didn't_ just go get a room. Beité's subtle wash of emotions and pheromones hadn't bothered her at first, but sitting this close to her—for this long—it was starting to feel like an itch beneath her montrals. "A kiss, huh? Fess up—was it a brother?"

Ahsoka groaned. Of course Fives wouldn't let the subject die.

She was _not_ going to discuss Carlac.

"Rex _almost _kissed me," she heard herself say instead. To her immediate, abject horror.

In the utter silence around the table, she wanted to crawl somewhere dark. Like the Undercity. What in all poodoo had made her dredge _that_ up?

"...and I'm also delusional. Maybe. I think." Force take it, she was _still_ talking. She'd thought she had conquered her mouth at least a year ago.

By the remarkable statue of ice sitting next to her, she had really stepped in it. Poodoo.

Fives and Coric were staring in blatant fascination and Ahsoka was pretty sure her chevrons were about to catch fire.

Tup's gaze was swiveling between the two of them like it was all a particularly fascinating hoverball match.

Beité, of course, broke the silence. "Well?" She rested her chin on one hand and practically beamed. At least _she _was amused. "What stopped you, Captain?"

Rex took a slow drink, placed the mug on the table with a light clink and shifted in his seat just enough to face Ahsoka, one eyebrow lifted. "From what I recall, you kissed me."

Ahsoka breathed a silent sigh of relief. Two separate incidents—and the latter had dissolved into one of the most awkward and embarrassing moments of her life—but his chilled tinge of anger had thawed into what felt a lot like a determined sort of resolve.

A giggle bubbled out of her before she could stop it. Maybe she really did need food. And some sleep.

"Woah, woah—" Fives leaned heavily against the table, staring at the two of them. "That deserves some explaining."

"No," Rex shot back. "It doesn't, trooper."

The giggle turned into snorting laugh.

"I think I agree with the ARC," Coric put in, a smile twitching at his mouth.

"That's the first time," Fives muttered.

Tup and the two women only looked bemused, although whether it was over Ahsoka's failed attempts at kissing or at her choked laughter, she couldn't tell. Now that she'd started, she couldn't seem to stop.

But she had to at least _try _to clarify, so she swallowed down another round of hysterics. "It wasn't really like that." When they all stared at her with matching grins, she added, "He didn't—"

"Ahsoka." Rex, at least, still had his senses.

"But you didn't!"

"_Ahsoka_."

For whatever reason, Coric burst into laughter and Ahsoka followed, snorting like a nerf at the bizarre cross of stern disapproval and annoyance on the captain's face—and the mild panic radiating off him like a staticky holoprojector.

"Where's the damn food?" he growled.

"Think you need another drink, too, Captain," Fives noted cheerfully, plucking something burgundy off a passing serving droid's platter and plunking in front of Rex.

"_Fek_ no," Rex snapped.

When Ahsoka made a grab for it, just to irritate Rex again, he muttered something unkind about Fives' true gene donor and dropped the drink into the hand of a passing sargeant.

"You really want a drink, Ahsoka?" Fives was suspiciously amiable and Ahsoka peered at him with narrowed eyes. He reached past Beité and nudged the pink drink with one thick finger. It looked morosely dull after sitting so long untouched. "As many pink things as you want. On me."

He really shouldn't have been surprised when the pink thing landed on his head and every trooper in the vicinity roared at his expense.

Not a drop landed on Beité.

Ahsoka _had _been a Jedi, after all.


	9. Chapter 8

"Well, this is awkward."

—B1 Battle Droid

* * *

"I'll take my chances," Rex said, with enough pointed finality to stop a ronto.

Of course, his brothers were a lot more obstinate than rontos.

"It's a good mo—" Tup tried again, but Coric cut him off.

"What's this I hear about a ship?" the medic asked quietly.

"An ambassadorial shuttle," he quickly said, glad to move on to a different subject, shifting just slightly to keep his arm from falling completely asleep. "Slated for decommission. General Kenobi requisitioned it."

They were still seated at one of 79s' cheap synth-leather booths, although Fives and his Zeltron had disappeared and Tullin, the Twi'lek, had wandered off to chat with a few other ladies at the central bar.

After inhaling more food than was probably healthy—especially the kind of food served at 79s—Ahsoka had simmered back down to her normal self and entertained the table with her odd partnership with Ventress, much to the delighted horror of Tullin. Fives' attempt to one-up her backfired. "Your spy network? Of _Zilkins_?" Tup had asked, incredulous.

The ARC had shrugged, noted that a conduit worm might be a good idea to have on one's side, and stolen the fried daro-root slices off Ahsoka's plate.

As the night progressed, they had dredged up everything from Kamino's training to their first sighting of a Jedi—"_Not_ a good first impression. A little youngling of a Padawan and panicking out of his mind on Geonosis," Coric said with a grimace—to just how many rounds Ahsoka had gone against the boys out on the sparring mats. And won. "There really isn't anything better to do, between assignments," she'd admitted to Beité.

But before Rex could thank any deities for all the normality, Ahsoka had nodded off. On his shoulder.

The knowing gleam in Coric's eye and the smirk on Fives' face had been enough to knock some buckets together—except for the minor fact that any movement would have dislodged the warm weight tucked along his arm.

It shouldn't have surprised him—and really, it_ didn't_ surprise him that she hadn't slept or eaten since that whole mess began. She was—no, _had been—_a Jedi, but even Jedi eventually felt the pull of their bodies' demands. Especially when said ex-Jedi was, in reality, still not much more than a kid.

Coric considered him for a moment. "Why do I get the feeling she's not really leaving the war?"

Because she wasn't. No matter all her options, Rex's gut instinct knew she'd be sticking around, one way or another.

In the silence following Coric's words and as the medic observed both Rex and the snoozing Ahsoka, Tup took his leave, wandering toward a raucous group centered around Jesse and Kix.

"Why the twenty-four hour delay?" the medic asked.

Rex took a long breath through his nose, thoughts shifting through what little had been sent via that terse internal comm report and his own suspicions. "The Council requested it. Ringo Vinda needs a joint force..." And Skywalker's continued silence—since finding Ahsoka in the Undercity, Rex hadn't received a single comm or even an indirect contact from his general—was telling. He suspected the Council was at least slightly concerned for their much vaunted Hero. "Official report will be issued this morning. General Tiplar is being recalled from spec-op to assist. Brass figured the reassignment and briefing needed that long."

"Tiplar?"

"General Tiplee's sister."

"Sister?" Coric's surprise was genuine. "I know better, but sometimes I forget they have families."

Rex glanced down at the blue and white montrals resting against his pauldron. He knew enough about Jedi to understand how oddly similar theirs and the clones' existences were: that twist of the galaxy's sabacc hand that labeled any-being as either clone, Force-sensitive, or just a typical wet.

Coric's face was thoughtful as he considered Rex, fingers tapping against his vambraces where he'd folded them across his stomach plating—and then the corners of his mouth twitched. "Didn't know you'd gone even that far."

Rex inwardly groaned. _Of course. The fekking kiss. _"Not open to discussion."

"The war won't last forever, Rex."

"She's a kid."

"Technically, you're twelve."

"Don't start."

Coric lifted one eyebrow. "There's more to life than being a soldier."

Rex nearly snorted. The irony of any clone saying that was thick enough to patch a hull breach. "Don't push it, lieutenant."

Both of Coric's eyebrows rose. "Pulling rank? It _does_ bother you."

Rex let his silence speak.

Coric's laugh was soft and somehow wry. "Well," he said, sliding himself out of the booth. "I'd love to stay and discuss our individual value, but there's a lovely lady waiting for me. Funny, she seems to like me best when I'm _not_ wearing my kit."

"Coric—"

Coric hesitated, one hand still on the table, although the rest of his body was turned toward the bar and his green-skinned Twi'lek.

_His own _shabla_ moment of insanity, after a court martial and execution that should've been his, if he'd been able to pull the trigger on Krell._

Something he should never have allowed, just as he should've protected his men—and had failed.

He couldn't say the words. They still tasted bitter and toxic and always would; a failure on his part, acknowledgement of every wrong he'd allowed on the battlefield—one battlefield in particular—and he could only carry forward_. _Alone.

Despite Rex's silence, Coric seemed to connect the unspoken pieces. Or maybe he'd always known. He wouldn't say it either, although when he looked back at Rex over his shoulder, his gaze was startlingly clear. But then, medics always seemed to have a disconcerting way of seeing all of the bloody, broken truth.

Even as the silence stretched between them, taunt and strained by their shared years, Coric seemed to bear it all—in that moment, in the hazy half-light of the club—with a grace Rex envied.

The medic's nod had a certain finality to it and when he stepped away, Rex felt a wash of gratitude. Coric had been a part of Torrent from the beginning, back on Kamino—all those endless drills and training and as Rex had earned the mantle of command through every blood- and sweat-slick moment. Of that original company formed by the Kaminoans, only Rex, Coric, and Del remained. Through two fekking years of war.

It was a sobering reality that he never dwelled on—except, apparently, tonight.

Over the steady thrum of the music, Rex could hear Tullin's trilling laugh, watched as Coric lifted her off her seat and buried his face against her neck, her head thrown back and the medic's hands already wandering.

With a sigh, Rex committed to the inevitable.

"Ahsoka," he said, close enough to her montrals that she'd feel the sound with enough force to wake her up.

She jerked upright with a mumbled, "Vector A-three-three," blinked owlishly, and then stared in consternation at the empty booth.

"Uh...oops."

Rex swallowed a chuckle at her expense. "I think I recall you sleeping through a hurricane on Giju."

She wrinkled her nose. "Oh, please. That was years ago."

He did chuckle, then. "Back when you were just a youngling?"

"Exact—hey!" Her scowl was fierce and completely ruined by the imprint of his pauldron on her cheek—and somehow all so reminiscent of their early months on the _Resolute_, when he'd been the assigned military mentor and she the ebullient student.

He nearly reached over to chuck her chin.

But her expression shifted, quick as the whirlwinds on Geonosis. "Sorry about earlier."

Rex straightened and rolled his shoulders, belatedly realizing he had hunched toward her while she'd slept. "Don't mention it."

"I really didn't—"

Rex held up a hand. "It was done, then—and still done, now. No use revisiting."

In the silence between them, she peered up at him, expression morose—except for the tell-tale twitch of her lips. "It was _that_ bad?"

At his sharp bark of laughter, she grinned and whatever tension had settled along her shoulders melted away—and so did his.

"Come on," he said, sliding out of the booth. "Most everyone's gone. And I've got a pile of 'pads to read through before we ship out."

Grumbling, she followed after. "When they opened this place, I kept trying to sneak off to see it. Anakin always seemed to know and would actually stick around the Temple," she muttered, gazing up at the multi-level club as he guided her past the circular bar and toward the main entrance. At this point in the night, what brothers he saw were stone drunk and falling off their barstools, and he made a mental note to double tomorrow's drills.

"Wait a minute," she said in dawning clarity, coming to a halt not twenty feet from the exit. She glanced back at the bar, then up at him. And he recognized that particular mischievous grin. "I don't have to leave." She held up her hands and turned back to the club. "I don't have to _go _anywhere."

"Technically, you're not of age—"

"Oh, _come on_, Rex—"

But as she protested, Rex noticed sudden movement at the bar and one group of clones splintered, spilling out a stumbling, excruciatingly drunk Kix, the club's hazy, flashing lights reflecting off his intricately-shaved head. Even through the dim light, there was no mistaking the intent in the medic's eyes.

_Ah, hells._

"Ahsoka, let's go. Now."

"_Commander!_"

But Ahsoka had noticed Kix and already darted toward him, her face bright with delight. She'd made it only two steps before faltering—but by then, it was too late.

"Ex-c-commander, I mean," Kix stuttered, swaying forward and gripping her arms with more force than he needed to, a feral grin fixed on his face that was completely at odds with the grim fury in his eyes.

In the next breath, Rex was between them and shoving Kix back. "Pull it together, Kix," he hissed. "Now is not the time."

"Why not?" the medic slurred, throwing his hands in the air and glancing around. For the moment, they hadn't attracted a lot of interest; Rex knew it wouldn't be long unless he shut Kix down. "Seems like a perfect time."

"Kix?" Ahsoka's hesitant question only seemed to provoke him, and with a quick shove to Rex's chest, he managed to get her in his sights again.

"Why'dya kill 'em?" Kix struggled and nearly fell over as Rex pulled him back to face him, only for the medic to lean roughly against Rex, peering over his pauldron. "You're so vapin' innocent, why'dya kill our brothers?"

"_What_?"

"_You heard me_!" There was an anguished, desperate note to his anger that surprised Rex just enough to let Kix—even drunk as a Corellian wine-maker—manage a violent twist out of the captain's grip. "We get killed all the time—but_ no_—" and he dragged out the word, only to have his mouth snapped shut for him by Rex's vambrace.

He'd known Kix had harbored a lot of anger since Umbara, but to see it—

No, he _should've _known.

Fek.

Another blur of white and blue and red medic's insignia, and Kix's arm was locked behind him. "That's enough, trooper," Coric said firmly.

"Woah—no, it's not," Ahsoka said, stepping into the fray between the three men—and then even closer to Kix. "What are you talking about?"

"Ahsoka," Rex growled, gripping her shoulder to pull her away.

"No, Rex," she shot back, not even glancing at him as she brushed his hand off and repeated, "Kix, what are you talking about?"

"You killed those men down in the prison sector, didn't you?"

"What? No—"

"_You did_!" he shouted, face twisted into something manic.

Now they were definitely attracting attention.

"Soldier, you are out of line. Coric—"

"_No_, Rex," Ahsoka snapped, and so did Rex's temper.

"I don't take orders from you anymore."

His hands were full from pushing her back and helping Coric keep Kix from slithering out of his hands, but he still saw her visibly blanch, eyes wide and hurt. He cursed under his breath.

_Really_? What did she expect?

"Fine," she ground out, and shooting past Rex, she gripped the edges of Kix's breastplate and dragged him down to meet her at eye-level. "Kix, I _didn't_ kill those men—and when I figure out who really is behind all this—"

"Yeah, right," he spat. Under Ahsoka's death grip on his breastplate, the medic's knees wobbled and would've likely hit the floor if Coric didn't still have his arm twisted up behind his back. Karking _di'kut_, how much fekking liquor had he scrounged up that night? "We've been there before, eh? Right in a firin' line, to shoot my best mate. Sounds like what you're lettin' 'em do, eh?"

Ahsoka flinched violently and dropped her hand from Kix's armor as if burned.

"Jesse, Coric, Tup," Rex snapped, taking note of the other two blue-and-white sets of armor hovering close by. "Get him out of here." When Kix turned his red-rimmed glare on Rex, it was the captain's turn to haul him up by the breastplate. "Out of line, soldier. You're restricted to base. Be grateful you're not sleeping this off in the brig."

Kix's face turned an ugly puce, but he subsided with a shake of his head and a muttered, "Just like you to take their side."

Rex abruptly jerked him closer, enough that Kix gave a pained grunt when his arm, still in Coric's firm grip, was wrenched nearly out of its socket.

Rex knew better than to let Kix—a Kix drunk off his deeces, who probably wouldn't even remember any of this by the next morning—get under his skin. Rex had done what he had to do on Umbara—what he'd had _no choice_ but to do.

But the consequences were still festering a year later, rotten and black like the endless night of that damned planet.

Kix silently met his gaze, eyes bloodshot and embittered and dimmed by the glaze of alcohol. Rex shoved him away without a word.

With a jerk of his chin, Rex motioned for the three to move Kix on out.

The club seemed diminished somehow once they were all gone.

"He really thinks I did it," Ahsoka said, in a shocked, small voice.

He glanced around; only a few sets of eyes were still turned toward them, some with mild curiosity, others with keen interest, even from the railings of the upper levels. All turned away at his notice, including the civilians.

_Fek_.

Grinding his teeth, he gestured for her to follow him out.

"Let's go, kid. Party's over."

* * *

"Why?" she asked, once they were clear of the club's main entrance. Rex had either commandeered another speeder or had ordered one of his men to bring the other one around, because a familiar one-seater type rested near the wall and he headed straight for it.

She stood close to him as he straddled the seat and waited expectantly for her to clamber on behind him, bucket unclipped and ready to be dropped on his head. His anger radiated off him in waves, like heat rising off the desert. Even a step back did nothing to ease the needling pressure in her mind.

When his eyes flashed in irritation, she only looked at him, arms crossed over her chest and eyes narrowed. "Are there others who think that?" she kept on when he remained silent. "He wasn't like that...earlier. No one was like that. Not in the 501st."

With a sigh, Rex dropped his gaze to the helmet in his hands and rubbed at the black hatch marks. "Kix isn't usually a mean drunk. Tarkin's evidence...still stands."

His words hit as hard as Kix's fury. "But it was all thrown out—"

"Does that really matter?"

"_Yes_!" She stared at him, stunned, but he only shook his head.

"That's what the GAR says happened." His eyes were hard and glittered in the light of passing speeders. A chill ran down her spine; she'd known Rex for long enough to read when his temper had been stretched too far. He leaned toward her and lowered his voice, but every word was clipped and sharper than a vibroblade. "And that's why you need to let this go."

She could only keep staring at him in disbelief.

He straightened after a moment, pulling his bucket on and disappearing behind the black visor. "Get off Coruscant. Go start a new life. Forget the war, forget—" He hesitated, then forged on. "Just forget _this_ life."

It took her a moment to pry open her mouth. "You know me better than that, Rex."

Her own voice sounded too small, too young, and she clenched her jaw against the tightness in her chest.

Rex met her gaze through his visor, but only for a second. His bucket jerked to the side and with a humming whine, he revved the speeder's repulsors. "I'll take you to the hangar."

The finality to his words made her stiffen.

"No. But thanks." She studied his averted profile, utterly thrown by the turn of the night. "I'll see you around, Rex."

"Ahsoka."

But even as she turned away and he made a grab for her forearm, another familiar voice shouted out across the speeder platform. "_Oy!_"

Ahsoka blinked in surprise. What now—was _Fives _harboring some sort of resentment, too?

The ARC, complete with zagging, blue-lined kit and swaggering kama jogged the length of the speeder pad, from where a pedwalk linked the club to a vertical maze of malls and open-air arcades, all of them aglow in Coruscant's hazy night with flashing neon and blindingly bright signs. Fives' wide smile was just as bright.

Not surprisingly, his still-sparkling Zeltron friend wasn't far behind him, laughing and arm-linked with—of all beings—a dour-faced male Muun.

Ahsoka decided she really didn't want to know.

"Do _you _think I killed those men?"

Fives' wide grin dimmed, and his hands—which he'd held up to ostensibly grab her in a hug—dropped to his sides. He glanced over her shoulder at Rex, then back down at her. "Who's the _shabuir _I need to kick back to Kamino?"

Ahsoka refolded her arms over her chest. "Do you?"

"Ahsoka—" Rex started in.

"_Fek_, no. And no one else does, either. Not if they have two neurons still knockin' around inside their buckets."

She turned and looked pointedly at Rex, who had pulled off his bucket again. He rolled his eyes and muttered a few choice words.

Fives' sharp laugh was unexpectedly close to her montrals and she jumped in surprise. "Let me guess—some _sheb_-head had too much to drink?"

"Kix," she admitted. The fact that it was _Kix_ stung—Kix, who she'd laughed with and kipped beside, who had patched her up countless times and had never, ever seemed to be angry about _anything_, even when a trooper was being obstinate over an injury.

But Fives had fixed his attention on Rex and some sort of unspoken discussion flew between the two of them.

Her aggravation spiked to new levels. "Thanks, guys," she said curtly, "but it's time for me to go."

That jolted Fives into action. "Ah, ah—" He grabbed her in one swoop of his arms. "The captain has to give you a proper goodbye."

He waggled his eyebrows suggestively and she wondered if she could pull a drink from the inside of the bar to drop on his head again.

"_Fives_," Rex snapped just as Ahsoka twisted out of the ARC's grip.

"Seriously, Fives," she said, holding up her hand when he got grabby again. "I need to go on. And you guys have a campaign to get ready for."

She tried and failed to ignore the pang of guilt that chased on the heels of her own words. Force knew how many capable Jedi they needed out there—_No, Ahsoka_, she chastised herself. _Don't go there._

"Well, then." Fives shifted to stand at attention—or half-attention, at least. It was mostly ruined by the cocky grin on his face, but the salute he shot her was genuine and radiated respect. "It was an honor, sir. I expect we'll see you around. Some way or another, right?"

She shook her head at him but smiled anyway, glad that _someone_ was on her side of things. Although she wasn't sure what to think when Master Kenobi and _Fives_—of all two people—seemed to agree on intent, if not on actual destination. "Thanks, Fives."

He laughed—and before she could resist—he swept her up and kissed her.

Granted, he landed closer to her cheek than her mouth, and so quick she was too surprised to react. It was enough of a shock that she didn't even notice the datachip slipped into her palm until Fives was backing away with another laugh. "I can't be your first," he said, winking before he gestured at Rex. "But I couldn't let that _di'kut_ get the first _goodbye_ kiss."

"Fives!" the captain growled, sounding a lot like a broken holorecord.

Maybe for Fives' health and safety, Ahsoka's thoughts were too focused on the datachip to do much more than stare bemusedly at the ARC as he backpedaled out of Rex's reach and slipped his arms around Beité, who only beamed benignly up at him and continued her animated, one-sided conversation with the Muun.

"Rex..." Ahsoka said, studying the small chip in her hand with the pads of her fingers. It was non-military, non-standard. "I think I will take that lift to the hangar, if you're still offering."

* * *

**A/N**: I'm deeply indebted to the fabulous **laloga**, who was super-patient while this chapter was dredged up from the tips of my toes. It's certainly much shorter than a typical chapter because it's only half of what it should be, which leads to the next note...

Unfortunately, I will be spacing out these chapters to every two weeks, with a bit of a hiatus after this particular chapter. The rest of my life needs some attention and writing for fun should not induce an anxiety attack, right? Right.


	10. Chapter 9

"Might I suggest less sleeping and a little more work?"

—Jedi Master Obi-Wan Kenobi

* * *

_Republic's finest, puking his guts out._

Coric tightened his grip on Kix's shoulder and slid his other hand along the back of his fellow medic's neck, then down to his pulse. Sweat-slick, elevated—but not rapid. Nothing too alarming. Still… "Kark it, Jesse. How much did he have?"

Jesse winced as another wet splat hit the duracrete and only shook his head.

After hauling a grimly silent Kix out of 79s, Coric had taken one look at the greenish cast to to the medic's face and vetoed any kind of air transport. Flying vomit was _not_ the preferred ending to his evening.

No, his preferred ending had only smiled and winked at him as the sight of Kix being an utter rancor's ass dragged him away from her soft touch.

Their small group—Kix slung between Coric and Jesse while Tup trailed close behind—had only made it a couple of blocks before Kix abruptly leaned over and lost it. Another couple rounds—"You've got worse aim on the line," Jesse complained, with a disgusted look at his own boots—and they managed to haul him into an alley.

"Better out than in." Coric couldn't quite keep the sarcasm out of his voice. Kix _should _know better. Even a pissed off, moodier-than-an-eight-year-old-cadet Kix. "You know, even with our metabolisms, there is such a thing as alcohol poisoning."

"Do you need your med-kit?" Tup asked, not-quite-hovering at Coric's side. Coric couldn't fault him; the smell wafting up from the duracrete was about as fragrant as a rackarian gutfish.

Coric shook his head. "Best medicine is time." He shot a pointed look at Jesse. "But I'd recommend putting a break on the sabacc for a few rotations." If any trooper was winning enough leave-creds to get _this_ drunk, command would need to take a closer look—something Coric knew Rex would rather not have to make an issue of.

There were far too few opportunities for any of them to be more than just soldiers.

Jesse jerked his chin down in an affirmative but didn't say anything; from the looks of it, he was trying to hold his breath as much as possible. Coric snorted; Jesse wasn't a rookie, but certainly didn't have a medic's stomach. _Try picking shrapnel out of a gut_.

Another damp splatter and this time, a low moan. "Still with us, eh?" Coric said to the figure hunched under his hands.

A string of non-Basic curses answered him. Hells, they weren't even Mando'a.

"Impressive," Jesse quipped, albeit weakly. He patted Kix on the shoulder. "Didn't know you knew that much Huttese."

Another mutter and Kix staggered back upright, only to make a stumbling lurch to the dirt-and-grime flecked wall. Even on the surface levels of Coruscant, not everything could be pristine and gleaming—although, from the looks of the alley, Kix wasn't the first to drag himself away from 79s and have an heart-to-heart with his stomach.

"You all done?" Coric asked. "Or do you need to paint the wall, too?" He didn't hold back the irritation in his voice; Kix had taken the deaths down in the prison sector hard, but imitating the business end of a ronto wasn't an acceptable outlet.

Kix grumbled something about Coric's face and droid excrement.

With a sigh, Coric slipped a hand under Kix's upper arm. Kix shrugged him off. Coric stepped even closer and pitched his voice low. "Let it go, Kix."

"Why should I?" Kix's voice was equally low, but reduced to a wet rasp. He turned his head to fix Coric with a stony glare.

Coric studied him; the glassy, red-rimmed eyes and, beneath that, a pallor that he was certain didn't come from too many shots of Alderaani bourbon. 79s or even the last few days dirt-side also wasn't the source of the deepening lines across the younger medic's brow.

"Report to the base med-bay after you've slept this off," Coric said. "Eleven-hundred hours."

When Kix growled his dissent, Coric laid a hand along his vambrace. "We need you at a hundred percent when we ship out, trooper." He pressed on the armor, enough that Kix's arm trembled and his balance wobbled, even though he was braced against the wall. "You're a good medic, but you won't be good for anything if your body isn't physically up to it." Coric paused, fixing Kix with another direct, hard stare when Kix's attention tried to shift away. "You know I'm right."

It took Kix a moment, but he relented with a slight dip of his chin. There may have been a flash of regret in his eyes, but Kix dropped his gaze quickly enough that Coric wondered if he'd imagined it.

Satisfied, Coric let his hand fall away and stepped back—only to nearly bowl over Jesse. "Kark it, man. Breathing room!"

"Sorry, sir." As Jesse's attention was still fully fixed on Kix, Coric highly doubted that. But then Jesse _did _turn his attention on Coric and he suddenly wished for a few extra doses of tact in all the younger troopers' brains. "He's fine? He'll be alright, right, sir?"

"No, Jesse, I won't," Kix snapped irritably. To his credit, he pushed himself fully upright to test his balance. "Severe case of nerf-pox. 'Fraid it's fatal."

"Ha. Haha." Jesse made to shove at Kix's shoulder and Coric hastily intervened. "Let _me_ be the one to make the jokes."

"Why?" muttered Kix. "To perforate my eardrums?"

"Oh, _now_ you're the funny one."

"No, just the charming one." Kix stepped forward, between Coric and Jesse—and although he needed a steadying hand once, did well enough. Enough to get back to base—or not. "You've got the funny. A winning team—we could just—"

"Easy!" Coric's arm shot out as Kix toppled forward like a felled walker.

But Jesse made the catch, and with a good-natured laugh, slung Kix's arm around his neck. "They should put us in with the Seppie Council. We'd win them over and we could all retire to 500 Republica. All the nuevian sundaes we can stomach."

Kix groaned, "_Don't_ mention food right now," as Coric steered the two toward the alleyway's exit. But one of their number wasn't following; when Coric glanced back, Tup was staring down the length of the alley, where the hazy night deepened to full darkness.

"Tup?" Jesse asked, noticing Coric's hesitation and twisting around, too. "You with us, brother?"

For a surreal moment, Coric wished for a blaster in-hand. There was an odd, familiar intensity to Tup's posture and Coric's muscles tensed as he recognized it: a trooper ready for a signal, coiled in wait for an assault's forward surge.

Kark it, they were on _Coruscant_, not on the line. "Tup?" Again, he kept his voice low. "What's on sight?"

"Nothing," Tup replied too quickly. He turned abruptly, one hand coming up to rub the back of his neck. He didn't even glance at his brothers as he headed toward the mouth of the alleyway. "Let's get to base."

Coric stared at him, then back where the alley tunneled off out of sight between the rising 'scrapers. Nothing moved in the night other than sluggish tendrils of steam that rose from the duracrete in a dirty haze. Nothing set his own instincts on edge.

By the time he turned back around, Tup was waiting at the pedwalk, beneath the stark light of the raised glowrods. He still wouldn't meet any of the group's gaze, and as they exited the alleyway, he shot forward, leading them along the familiar walkways. Coric shook his head at the whole lot of them; the night had been weird enough without a spooked trooper and an _o'sic_-faced brother.

"Guess someone's been sneaking off with my holomovies," muttered Jesse, staring at Tup's back plating. Tup's quicker pace planted him far ahead of the group—although he didn't seem inclined to slow down much. "I wondered what happened to _Attack of the Cthons_."

"Considering your _other_ movie tastes," Coric remarked dryly, "he's more likely to be terrified of a roaming pack of Zellies."

Over Jesse's protests, Kix managed an actual laugh. "Remember, Jesse," the medic said, wriggling his fingers out in front of him as if over a keypad. "_Reset_ the holoterminal."

Jesse, never down long, shrugged easily. "I'll just sign in on _your_ chip, next time."

* * *

Ahsoka was quiet during their ride back to the Temple hangar, a fact that should have tipped Rex off. He eased the speeder down beneath Processional Way, past the looming pillars and zig-zagging pedwalks and into the hangar's half-lit maw. Ahsoka's shuttle was painted a subdued maroon beneath the bare lighting, although the pale glowrods reflected in thin glowing strips across the shuttle's transparisteel cockpit.

A tiny voice inside of him made note that he was just a tad envious of her new-found freedom. He mentally choked the voice into silence.

"Rex?" she finally asked as he dismounted and she followed suit. When he glanced her way, her brow was scrunched and her gaze was still fixed on his speeder. She tipped her montrals toward the shuttle. "Do you have a moment?"

He _should_ leave.

But even now, the prospect of heading back to the Coruscant base—only to bunk down with all the half-formed suspicions from the last few days—was a leaden weight that had dropped to 'when absolutely necessary' on his list of duties. He had half a mind to wait it out on the _Resolute_ until he was called for the next war council.

His opinion must've shown on his face, because the corners of her mouth twitched. "I'll take that as a yes." And without another word, she marched off for the shuttle.

Rex didn't need any more of an invitation.

"It's a good ship," he said once he'd mounted the hatchway ramp and taken a closer look at the interior. Nothing expansive; all dark durasteel, with a bunk inset on one side and a variety of multi-use and storage on the other. A single doorway, open, led to the cockpit and Ahsoka had already taken the pilot's seat, head bent over one of the comm arrays.

"Hm?" She glanced up at him, then around at the cockpit when he came to stand in the doorway, one elbow propped against the frame. Her brow was still furrowed in thought. "Yeah." She grimaced. "Recognize it?"

He _had_ recognized it—although at the time, the stenciled numerals had only nudged at the back of his brain like a small, insistent comm reminder. On the flight back to the GAR base, he'd let the Coruscanti auto-traffic control the speeder and dug through what records he could access via his HUD. Oddly, it took a roundabout search through the database to find out when exactly it had been requisitioned to Generals Skywalker and Kenobi; all other aspects of the mission to the Chrelythiumn system were securely classified.

"General Skywalker called it the Mortis Mission, correct?"

Ahsoka wrinkled her nose. "Yeah." She leaned back in the seat, head tilted up and gaze tracking along the various reader-boards above the console and viewing pane. "Did he ever tell you anything about that mission?" Before he could respond, she held up a hand. "Wait. Scratch that."

"The answer's 'no', if you're worried for some reason." He watched her, somewhat wary. She was hiding something, and he wasn't sure he wanted to know. "Listen... About Kix—"

She waved him off with one hand and a self-deprecating twist of her lips. "The records say I did it, right?" She shrugged, but Rex recognized the determined line between her eye markings. "That's all he can go by. Can't say I blame him."

The last statement rang with enough truth that he winced. "Fives is right. The men _know_ you—"

"And I knew Barriss." She shook her head. "You don't have to defend him or excuse him or anyone else." Her head bent forward and her frame hitched with a deep, long breath. "But I did want to thank you for—for not believing I did it. That night."

Rex stared at the juncture of her montrals and the metallic pieces of her headdress, dull in the shuttle's low light.

The inescapable truth of the matter was that he _had _considered the possibility. In the same breath that he'd stated his trust, he'd known the evidence was stacked obscenely against her. That three more clones were dead from a lightsaber's distinctive slice, and Ahsoka had been the only possible—if not _plausible_—suspect.

Until he'd seen her. Krell had made no attempt to spare anyone; Ahsoka made every attempt to avoid harm.

None of that negated his own doubt. "Ahsoka, I called the APB on you." She lifted her head and he forced himself to meet her steady gaze. "I'm the reason they used live rounds. I reported that you killed three clones, and that you had to be considered armed and dangerous."

She was silent a long moment, the brilliant blue of her eyes dimmed to gray in the half-darkness of the cockpit. He held her gaze; he owed her this.

But instead of a disappointment or a dismissal from her sight or any other expected response, she dropped her focus to his waist—to his holsters, empty and nearly weightless without the comforting heft of his deeces. "I fought beside you for two years, Rex," she said. "You didn't take a shot. You didn't even draw. If you _had _thought I did it, why didn't you try to take me down?"

He attempted to swallow against an inexplicably dry mouth.

"You would've, you know," she went on, voice soft and somehow gentle. "You know me well enough to know how to land at least a stun—and don't deny it," she added, when he opened his mouth.

It was true. It also hit too close to the nightmare that had replayed in his sleep, over and over, since Umbara. The cruelty of his subconscious—replacing Krell's face with hers, ready for execution—was an irony he bore as punishment for Dogma's fate and for all the men who'd died on that fekking planet.

"But you didn't," she finished, with a clear, adamant finality, as if that were the only act that mattered.

"You ran, Ahsoka. Even though you did everything to avoid a confrontation, that was enough proof to cast doubt."

She flinched, but her mouth thinned to a narrow line and her eyes took on a steely, determined intensity.

"And that's why you're digging into this, isn't it?" he finished, observing the familiar posture of a certain Padawan who wouldn't let anything get in her way—not when it came to a perceived injustice. "Not for you, but..." _There are worse options, _he reminded himself_. Like going off to be a damned bounty hunter_. "Just don't let me catch your holo up on the Wanted list."

Her laugh was short and awkwardly abrupt. "Can I ask you something?" Without waiting for the obvious answer, she went on, "Does your helmet record _every_thing—even when you're not wearing it?"

"That's two somethings, and no, it doesn't." This, at least, was a topic he was fully comfortable with. He unclipped and shifted his bucket around to show its innards; dark, with the soft blink of electronics. "It goes on stand-by when there's no active use. Still receives transmissions, but re-routes comms and commands to my 'brace."

"Stand-by, but not _off_, right?"

"Right." It should've been unnerving that she had her own suspicions regarding the troopers' tech. Instead, it was a relief.

Despite the thoughtful gaze she still leveled at him, her lips twitched. "Things I didn't even know until I was out of the GAR."

A memory bubbled up in his mind and he fought back a laugh. "I recall you trying on a few trooper's buckets."

"Hey, they've changed since then. And besides, those were _pilots_' helmets."

And she'd looked ridiculous; tiny, bony body with Lieutenant Axe's helmet dropped down to her shoulders. She'd even attempted to make a comm call and somehow rerouted everything to the PA system.

Rex recalled reaming her out. Twice. And she'd subsequently tried to steal _his_ bucket for a week—up until her disastrous first command above Ryloth. "That was your first mistake. Command buckets have the best tech."

"You wouldn't let me try on yours, remember?"

"Regs are regs."

"I'd believe you more," she muttered, eye markings slanting together severely—an effect then ruined by her eyeroll, "if I didn't know how many regs you toss out the viewport on any given rotation."

He dropped his gaze to the helmet at his side and his fingers tapping along the rim. "Regs have their place, Ahsoka."

She snorted in disbelief, and when she didn't say any more, he lifted his head. A little, sly smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. "You'd probably make a good pilot."

He raised an eyebrow at her. Where had _that_ come from? "Careful, kid. I might get insulted."

Ahsoka laughed outright at that. "Okay, maybe not _now_." She tipped her montrals to the side, towards the co-pilot's seat. A buzz started in his ears and swam down to his chest when he caught her meaning. The fact that she would even _suggest_, after his admission of doubt, after _everything_... "Maybe…after the war."

When he didn't reply, Ahsoka faltered. "I—I mean only if you, you know, get tired of the boring life." She flashed a lopsided grin and shrugged. "Unless you really want to take up something normal. Like accounting."

"Ah—_no._" His fingers twitched and he tamped down the response he _wanted_ to give her—which seemed to hover somewhere between the urge to either shake her or kiss her. Yet instead of something polite and innocuous and safe, he heard himself say, "I appreciate the offer, but I think we both know the likelihood of my survival."

Silence stretched between them.

"The war won't last forever, Rex." She echoed Coric's statement perfectly and he shifted on his feet, fingers sliding over the bucket's rim. Her eyes dropped to his hand. "Rex—"

"I _will_ do my duty, Ahsoka."

Fek, he sounded like a pretentious ass.

If she took offense, she didn't show it; she was back to studying him, and if he'd expected some other emotion to cross her face, he would've been disappointed. "Then the offer stands, Rex," she said softly.

The buzzing dropped further, down into his stomach, and for the first time in almost a year, he felt utterly awkward in her presence. "I should go."

Her throat worked for a moment before she simply nodded.

Rex readjusted his grip on his bucket, re-clipped it to his side, stalling, but there wasn't any more to say besides, "Goodbye, Ahsoka." His voice caught on her name, but he didn't care.

Instead of replying, she rose out of the pilot's chair and, without hesitating or asking, wrapped her arms behind his neck and hugged him close and _fek it all_ if the buzzing in his mind and body drowned out even his own heartbeat. This time, though, he managed to hold his head together long enough to pull her against him.

"I know you'll take care of him." Ahsoka's voice was soft and broken and he breathed her in, musky leather and pungent oil. "I know you'll take care of your men."

"Nothing less."

"Take care of yourself, too."

He swallowed thickly, unable to articulate a response, much less a promise.

Her grip tightened and her words were warm against his ear. "Goodbye, Rex."

Rex could only hug her tighter, until the moment he _had_ to let her go and take on the weight of her absence, hanging in silence over his mind.

Maybe the war _wouldn't_ last much longer. Maybe the losses they'd suffered recently were the brutal punch needed to push them further, farther—and faster. But it was a hope encased in ice, and he wondered what kind of fire could burn a path through the all the blood-soaked battlefields to any kind of final victory.

He hesitantly slid one hand beneath her rear lek, then down, along the curve of her upper back; felt the coolness of her bare skin through the thin twill of his gloves.

He had one more future to fight for, even if he would never have a part in it.

* * *

Padmé woke with a jolt.

The stem of her wineglass slipped from her fingers to land with a soft clink on the wroovian carpet, spilling the final dregs of her pale muscato across the rich weave. It took her a moment to reorient herself; the lights were on, but dimmed, the windows dark and the night beyond lit only by the never-slumbering city.

_Something_ had woken her. With a quick stoop and a twist of her shimmersilk night robe, she retrieved the wineglass and set it and the datapad she'd been reading—still scrolling regular news updates on the Temple's inner turmoil and Ahsoka's departure, like it was all just the latest celebrity scandal—on the low table close to her settee.

The hours had stretched by innocuously after she'd walked with the Twi'lek youngling from that Temple anteroom. She'd watched the sunset deepen to a bloody red before giving way to the softer palette of twilight, then the hazy constant of the Coruscanti night. As the chrono had slipped past midnight, Padmé wondered if he would come at all.

But as she padded across her sitting room toward the pool of darkness beyond her bedroom doorway, she _knew_ he was there.

His silhouette was black against her window, his fists clenched tight against his sides and the whole of him crackling with an energy that would've made a lesser creature scurry away. There were times she wondered if that instinct in her was actually a bit of wisdom, rather than weakness.

She knew he _couldn't_ take this well. Any of this.

"I'm sorry, Anakin."

Empty words, but he would need to hear them. She'd known, somehow, before Ahsoka had ever left the tribunal chamber, before Padmé had accepted the dismissed charges and studied her young friend from the corner of her eye.

The damage had been too great to repair with simple words.

His head dipped but he didn't turn. "It wasn't your fault."

"No," she said after a quiet moment, watching as the tension radiated from him in almost palpable waves. "But I'm deeply saddened that it came to any of this."

He didn't respond. She watched him for a long moment; studied the play of darkness and flickering light across his face, the lines that shouldn't have spidered out from his eyes, the muscles of his jaw working as he ground his teeth.

"Come to bed, Ani."

If possible, his fists clenched tighter. She could hear the leather creak, rubbing and sliding over metal and skin.

She closed in on him, letting her hands drift over his bracers, then up into the rough fabric of his robes. He still reeked of old oil and the Undercity's rot, laced with his ever-present cologne of ozone and plasma.

He was still silent, eyes hard and durasteel gray in the scant light cast by the windows. Her hand found the wild half-curls along the nape of his neck, felt the muscles there tense beneath her touch. He was so inexplicably different from the young man who had hovered awkwardly at her side, over two years before—harder, wilder, now, all of his mind and heart echoed with startling accuracy by his body.

"Obi-Wan…" he began, then let the words fade between them.

"Tell me."

Anakin turned to her, and the intensity of his gaze sent a flutter of something akin to fear down her spine to pool in her belly, anxious and tight.

She remembered—far too clearly—the quiet homestead on Tatooine and the stumbling admission he'd made.

"I won't ever let anything happen to you, Padmé."

She tried to twist her lips into a smile but failed utterly. "You can't protect me from everything, Anakin." When his eyes hardened further, she reached a hand up to smooth over his brow, then down to cup his cheek. "Nor would I want you to."

But he shook his head, dislodging her hand. "This war…"

Again, he trailed off, and this time, she finished for him, linking her fingers in his. "It won't come between us, Anakin. Trust me in this."

"What would, then?"

She hesitated, taken aback by both his question and the underlying edge to his voice, the pressure and weight that all seemed to coalesce on her tongue.

"Come to bed, Anakin," she managed.

"_Tell me_—"

"Come to bed," Padmé repeated, cutting him off effectively and lifting his hands to press his fingers against her face, then down to her collarbone, then her shoulders.

Finally, she saw the heat in his eyes shift, the _intent_ sway from one passion to another, too much like a pendulum, unable to find stillness or peace while pushed between an ever-demanding war and a never-satisfied Council.

Her voice lowered to a whisper as his hands drifted down to encircle her waist. "Let me be your wife, Anakin."

A tiny part of her mind acknowledged her implicit part in his defiance of the Council and the hypocrisy of her act; that regardless of his arguments against his Order's strictures, she understood the need for both distance and empathy in any peacekeeper's effort. As queen, she'd had no choice but to understand such things.

Yet among the greater cosmos, among the trillions that lived and died in the space of a single breath, surely their lives were—from the perspective of the stars—as insignificant as any other.

And as his arms wrapped around her and held her close, both gentle and terrifying in their strength, all she could offer him was her love.

* * *

Ahsoka scrubbed at her bleary eyes and failed completely at holding back a jaw-cracking yawn.

The last few hours had dragged by with all the sluggish energy of a Hutt, and at this point in the early dawn hours, her eyes felt like Tatooine had blown in for a stay.

Despite having hunched over the shuttle's processing terminal for—_Wow, five hours_, she realized with a glance at the chrono—she knew absolutely nothing else about the inner workings of the past three days. She _did_ know that the upper levels of the new med center had insets of Mustafarian obsidian and TriSol Shipping had lost their contract with the GAR over an embarrassing mixup with hovermops and munitions.

Fives' datachip proved to be a tangled mynock's nest of information—a bizarre assortment of medical supply manifests and GAR base recordings, everything from the as-built holos of the new med-center to a long history of shipment rosters and routes to the GAR base.

Rex had disappeared into the night with all the gruff intensity of a bull bantha and she'd slipped the shuttle out of the hangar to find a reasonably-priced public spaceport. Master Kenobi's credit bank chip had been placed conspicuously on top of the pilot's console, and once she'd settled the shuttle into an empty berth, she'd fixed her full attention on the ARC's final gift, nerves tingling in anticipation.

Only she really had expected something a little more...relevant.

Even now, as an early morning fog shrouded the graying dawn and dampened the port's floodlights to only pale, distant pinpricks, she was reduced to digging randomly through the various files, hoping something blatantly obvious would pop up. Like the missing recordings from the prison sector.

_No luck._ With a groan, she leaned her elbows on the console and rubbed at her temples. "This is going to take a while."

Days. _Weeks._

But at the moment, she didn't have anything better to go off of and she knew _something_ was buried in the information. She just needed the clarity of mind to sort it and figure out all the connecting points—and hope it rose into a hologram that made some sense of the tangle of thoughts that kept crowding through her head.

_Anakin said…_ What had he said in the prison cell, when he'd brought Padmé? "The clones didn't report seeing anything," she murmured, closing her eyes and rubbing at her brow. It would've been impossible not to see the effects of her fight with Barriss; nothing left a mark quite like a lightsaber. There _had_ to be reports. Somewhere.

She just had to figure out _exactly _where—and who had them.

With a sigh, Ahsoka closed down the terminal and stood, stretching cramped legs. If she was going to be spending her time hunched over a console, she would at least get something to keep her eyes open.

"Wonder where Master Kenobi requested all his tea from," she muttered, peering around the shuttle and remembering the few times she'd sought his counsel. He _always_ had a kettle of tea ready when she had appeared at his doorway; granted, he'd probably always sensed her coming.

"_Your Force signature has all the subtlety of a hurricane_," he'd once remarked.

"_I'll take that as a compliment_, _Master,_" she'd shot back.

It only took a moment of searching the main cabin to find that, yes, Master Kenobi had ensured the shuttle was well-stocked—and obviously to his tastes. A neat little row of cyrodil tea lined one duraplast shelf.

She smirked at the delicately painted boxes. _Of course_.

A moment of more rummaging revealed a small conservator and a heating element; in another compartment, a sonic sink and an inset container for drinking water. She grimaced. The 'fresher, she knew from her last time in the shuttle, only had a sonic shower. Not the favorite way for any Togruta to get clean.

In a smallish side-compartment, her fingers brushed over a slim, metallic box. Curious, she pulled it out and keyed it open—

A Pantoran Constallis Goddess—all dark blue stone, rubbed smooth—from Chuchi, after the Trade Federation's failed blockade; the Togrutan sash—tattered and burned—from a young mother on Kiros; the little trooper helmet carved by Hardcase, who had been more artistic than he'd ever wanted to admit.

Her Padawan beads.

Ahsoka snapped the box shut and shoved it blindly into the recesses of its shelf.

Some things—and some memories—would need to wait before she could face them again.

She took a ragged breath. "Well, it's you and me, now," she said to the ship, and her voice echoed loud in her montrals. "Although I wouldn't mind a droid."

The ship gave a tiny answering hiss as she closed the storage unit's hydraulic door.

"Caf," she suddenly decided. "Frothed caf." _That_ would keep her awake.

But as she descended from her ship, draped in a hooded cloak to ward off the pre-dawn chill, she wondered if she should've just taken a nap. The fog was thick enough to distort both her vision and her montrals, and each dark, docked ship loomed up out of the fog like durasteel-plated beasts, hunched and sleeping, waiting to be roused.

It only seemed appropriate that she hadn't even reached the edge of the port before she sensed the tell-tale pinprick in her mind of a nearby Force-sensitive.

Someone was following her.

* * *

Many thanks again to the wonderful **laloga**, who does wonders with her beta'ing skills! Obi-Wan's preferred tea, cyrodil, is of her creation and she kindly allowed me to plunk it into this 'verse, too.


	11. Chapter 10

"Here we go."

—Jedi Padawan Ahsoka Tano

* * *

Instinct and training took over.

With a silent push off from the permacrete, Ahsoka leapt onto the snub-nosed prow of an old shipping freighter. The durasteel was dented and pebbled from its years in space and slicked with a fine layer of condensation, but her feet didn't stay still long enough to slip. Another quick leap and she found purchase alongside the freighter's starboard engines, fingertips braced against the wet hull.

But in the seconds it took to gain a vantage, the Force-signature in her mind vanished, as if a glowrod had simply winked off.

Fog drifted up and around her, thickening to a dense, soupy gray. The only light came from illumination banks set in regular intervals all along the port's wide docking bays and Ahsoka waited, tilting her montrals and attempting to dispel the odd, cottony effect fog had on her senses; too much like swimming through the dark, murky waters of Mon Cala's lower seabeds.

The Force itself still eddied and lurched through her mind without any consistency, as it had from the moment Commander Fox had removed the Force-block binders from her wrists in the tribunal chamber. She probably should've spent the last five hours meditating, rather than digging through Fives' bizarre collection of manifests and floorplans, but she figured time was now a little bit more on her side. At least the GAR didn't have a warrant out for her head.

But to actively seek with the Force again, like she'd attempted to do down in the Undercity…

It was one thing to move things around; manipulating the physical had come surprisingly easy to her, even as an Initiate. Manipulating or even sifting through the mental, the emotional—_that_ had always been a trial. Over the last two years—despite all of Anakin's training—it only seemed to get harder, like the war itself was muddying the entire mental landscape of the galaxy.

_Well, here goes nothing._

To Ahsoka's surprise, the Force moved out from her with only a crackle of protest, as if eager to reassert itself in her mind. It sensed and sought with a clarity that was almost alarming—although why the Force hadn't been quite so forthcoming when she'd been searching for the truth… was a question that wouldn't likely receive an answer.

_Or maybe I just didn't want to see it._

With another mental shove, she pushed _those_ particular ramifications off to the side and focused on the _now_.

There was someone sleeping inside the ship she'd alighted on—male, elderly, with the hazy mind of someone who liked their spice too much; further away, past two old, empty transports that she could just make out with her montrals, she felt the impression of several other minds, all ensconced in a mid-tier yacht. Also sleeping. No one else seemed inclined to walk the docks; not at this time in the morning.

She _had _felt that presence: a Force-sensitive's mind was unmistakable, regardless of species; bright blooms of color against a mercurial tapestry. Not always easy to track down, but still vivid enough to draw the eye.

But whatever she'd sensed had vanished into the mental landscape, as nebulous as the fog around her.

With a soft huff of frustration, Ahsoka pushed away and dropped back down to the permacrete.

Five minutes later—once she'd descended from the port into the glow-rod lit and fog-free depths of a hovertrain station—she felt it again, winking in and out like a bad holoprojector. And then again, when she'd passed the hovertrain by and slipped past the sleep-glazed eyes of early-morning commuters, then down a slideramp into an enclosed shopping arcade, already alight for the morning. Small tapcafs were open and slowly filling with their share of commuter traffic, each jogging for position at breakfast cafs and delicatessens. It was the normal world, everything so far removed from both the Temple and the GAR that it could've been another galaxy. It was also as temptingly benign as the rows and rows of glazed pastries displayed behind the transparisteel windows.

_Those_ were enough to make her mouth water—and for a second, she forgot the odd presence firing like a wistie on and off around her.

"Well," she muttered, "if they want to chat, they can find me over breakfast."

Funny enough, that's exactly how it happened.

* * *

"What, no rest for the wicked?"

Not surprisingly, Coric found Rex in the captain's base office, head bent over two datapads and likely comparing either the manifests or scheduled troop transports for the joint campaign between the 501st and the 330th. As Rex had said, the official channels had been satisfied and Coric had even seen the 330th's new secondary general in the main medbay. She was a shade of green reminiscent of unripe muja fruit, almost dull against the vibrant red of her sister. Both Jedi had head-tresses that flowed in elegant waves as they walked with Commander Doom, apparently discussing the 330th's recent losses and necessary replacements.

"Thought that was for the weary." Without glancing up, Rex pulled another datapad from a pile and handed it to Coric. The medic didn't bother reading it; he recognized the 330th's emblem and medical insignia, and as he'd just spent the morning reviewing both legions' current medical capacities and scheduled supply ships, he likely knew the contents well enough to rattle them off without a peek. Ringo Vinda was expected to be a long campaign, and the medical bays were prepping for the worst.

"Speaking of weary…" Coric trailed off, setting the 'pad down close to the edge of the desk and taking a seat in one of two chairs set in front. When the captain glanced up, it only took a moment of study for Rex to sigh and drop both datapads to the desk.

"Don't start, Coric."

The medic waved him off. "Not _you_." Although he doubted the captain had slept since Ahsoka's send-off, he wasn't going to lecture. Coric leaned forward to prop his elbows on his knees and rub his hands together, wondering exactly how to phrase this. "We're designed to handle every stress this war can throw at us, Rex. But some marks are being left and showing enough signs that I'm starting to get concerned."

The captain's eyes narrowed. "Is this about Kix?"

"In part, yes."

There was an irritable shake of his superior's blond head. "He picked a hell of a time to get his briefs in a wad."

Coric snorted but pressed on regardless. "It hit too close, Rex. Did you read up on the men killed down there?"

The captain rubbed one hand at the stubble on his chin, then pinched the bridge of his nose. "Yes."

"Kix trained under Pol." The loss of one of their best triage _clone—_as opposed to one of the enlisted—medic-trainers had been a hard blow; Coric had genuinely liked Pol and had celebrated his permanent transfer to the ArmyMed facility just last month. It had been a frankly surreal experience; kitted clones rubbing elbows with the wide-eyed, admiring—and jewel-draped—Coruscanti public. The whole thing had been held at a swanky restaurant that jutted out from the dizzying heights of a spacescraper, all of which was hosted by Pol's self-proclaimed patron—a bizarre story in itself, which the patron repeated to varying degrees of accuracy as the night wore on.

At the time, Coric had been amused by Coruscant's high society and their sudden interest in clone armor and clone hairstyles and clone ways, and although they all seemed to think of his brothers as more decorative than functional, none of the troopers had minded the attention tended on them during and even after the event. But watching Pol at work among them had been an interesting study; he had wielded his personality with all the finesse of a laser scalpel and the glitterati had lapped it up.

It meant nothing in the end. Pol had just been another body for the base's recyclers.

Why Pol had even been down in the prison sector that night was a question that couldn't be answered, and news of his death had hit like a blow to the solar plexus. Life wasn't promised to any of them—they were _created_ to die for the Republic, after all—but to die in what was arguably one of the most secure places in the entire galaxy…

It was both an irony and a seeping wound.

But Kix, in particular, was taking it too hard.

Rex seemed to agree. "Coric, you know that doesn't excuse his behavior."

"No. But it also doesn't negate those recordings," Coric pressed. "Can't you find _any_thi—" Rex held up a hand, then quickly twisted it to the flat signal for 'silence'. When Coric peered at him, puzzled, the captain only shook his head. There was a particular glint to the man's eye that Coric recognized, and with a frustrated sigh, the medic changed tactics. "How often are the nightmares?"

It was Rex's turn to be thrown. "What?"

Coric almost laughed at the expression on his superior's face; he was as wide-eyed as a startled tooka cat. It also answered a growing suspicion. "I spend a lot of time measuring brain waves. It's pretty essential during a dip in bacta, and we're all similar enough that there's not a lot of deviance." Rex grunted acknowledgement of that; the captain knew at least the rudimentary logistics of the medbay's practices. "Over the last year, I noticed the REM patterns getting thrown off in most every trooper that came through the bay."

"Basic, Coric."

"REM—dream sleep." He felt the corners of his mouth hitch up. "It's just a part of a humanoid sleep cycle, but still pretty essential for mental and physiological recovery. If they'd wanted something that could keep going without real sleep for days, they should've cloned some—"

"Coric," the captain said, holding up a hand. "Past...the sleeping bit, what are you getting at?"

"From what I can pull from most medical, non-military texts, nightmares don't generally affect REM sleep or the sleeper; it's just an aspect of it, normal as regular dreaming."

Rex waved him on when Coric hesitated. "Yet…"

"This is where I start guessing. Going off what I've observed of troopers in the bacta tanks, their sleep-cycle is interrupted around the halfway point—_mentally_—of the REM stage."

Rex caught the emphasis. His eyes narrowed and his arms crossed over his chest. "And that's significant, _how_?"

"It's one thing to have your sleep interrupted by some outside source. But for the brain to regularly stimulate _itself_ out of a normal and necessary function?" Coric scrubbed at the back of his neck with one hand. It was unacceptably abnormal; focus wasn't an option on the battlefield. "It's not a good sign."

Rex studied him for a moment, his gaze thoughtful. "And how does this relate to Kix?"

Again, Coric hesitated. His hunches were usually correct, but he doubted Kix would be at all amenable to this kind of request—and he didn't particularly want to make it an order. "I'd like to see if this carries on in someone who isn't or even _hasn't_ been in a bacta tank."

"You're the medic, Coric. _You_ make that call."

"But only with your approval. Tell me, Captain." Again, Coric leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "You _have_ had nightmares, right?"

The play of muscles along Rex's jaw was answer enough.

Coric took a calculated risk. "And they started after Umbara, right?" Again, the captain's silence was telling—although Coric nearly rolled his eyes at his brother's obstinacy. _Straight answer. It isn't hard. _"Right," the medic answered for him. He rose from his seat and started for the door, sliding the datapad from the desk as he went.

He'd actually made it through the door before Rex spoke.

"Kix volunteered for that duty; he knew what was being asked of him—they all did." The captain blew out a frustrated sigh. "If it hadn't been those four, Fives' speech might not've had the same effect."

Coric didn't turn. He _couldn't_ turn, but he needed to say it. It had been a year—yet it still needed to be said. "You had a _medic _line up to shoot his best mate, Rex." He glanced down at the datapad; rows and rows of neat, accessible data, nothing at all like the messy, bloody chaos of a man's chest blown open by flying shrapnel—but still nothing like the hell of mopping up after the treason on Umbara. Coric had been in bacta from the initial assault, and it had fallen on Kix's shoulders to coordinate all of Torrent's squad medics during a fight that saw casualty numbers rocket to atmospheric heights—and yet Rex had still apparently offered Kix the choice of shooting his best friend and brother.

Coric would never forget Kix's haunted gaze when he'd reported to him, immediately after Coric had been lifted out of the tank; his brother's brush with a fallen Jedi had left scars worse than a lightsaber's burn. "Voluntary or not, you can't _not _have nightmares about that."

The door slid shut on the captain's silence.

* * *

"_Flat blue half-top caf, up!"_

"_Dry shot froth-caf!"_

Ahsoka was almost certain she hadn't seen the inside of a specialty tapcaf for more than twenty minutes in her entire life. After devouring two loop pastries, she'd sat in this one for over an hour, listening to an unending list of all the ways caf could be frothed, folded, made, and unmade. It was...odd, how much civilians liked their caf. But then, she knew better than to try to speak to Admiral Yularen before he'd had at least two cups every rotation.

The place smelled delicious—of steamed blue milk and caf and the heady scent of baking pastries—and there was a constant flow of customers and conversation, all borne along at a lulling murmur that was somehow just as soothing to her mind as a few hours of meditation. It was all strangely comforting and relaxing to simply _sit_; to let the world continue on without her for a moment, but still _see_ it all and not be so removed.

"Wondered if you were going to join me," she finally said, without glancing up from the holonews tablet that she'd borrowed from the tapcaf just ten minutes before, as she'd snagged her third loop pastry and slowly nibbled it down to crumbs. She wondered if it was normal that the final verdict on her trial had been shunted down to the lower dregs of the news; all she could find was a small blip, and not even a mention of Barriss as the real traitor.

Long, furred fingers, tipped with stubbed claws, tapped the duraplast table. She waited.

And then he sat.

Ahsoka flicked her thumb over the tablet's controls; the low holoimage faded into the flat gray of the screen. "Is there a reason you've been following me?"

Her visitor didn't answer, and when she looked up, she nearly flinched.

A black-furred Nalroni, heavily scarred along the left side of his face and narrow, graying muzzle, hunched in the seat across from her, looking as out of place in the specialty tapcaf as if Hondo and his pirates had plopped down for a chat. A nondescript ragged robe was draped over his shoulders and she caught the distinct smell of the Undercity off him. Underneath the robe were, unmistakably, the standard brown wraps of a Jedi: threadbare, old, but well-fitted to the canid's lean frame. And of course, just visible at his waist, hung the hilt of a saberstaff.

As if the firm press of his mind against hers left any doubt.

He met her regard with a flat, calculating stare. By instinct alone, her hands jumped to the lightsabers at her waist.

Black eyes followed that movement and settled on the two silver hilts. "You are no longer Jedi."

_Sithspit_. _That didn't take long._ "No."

"Yet the Council has allowed you to keep your lightsabers. An unusual departure from tradition."

Ahsoka stared at him. He could've been discussing the non-weather on Coruscant, for all the inflection he put in his rough voice. "Ah… Seems so," she hedged, studying the creature across from her. As far as she knew, there weren't any Nalroni Jedi currently in the Order. Granted, she hadn't exactly kept up with all the thousands of Jedi, but the Nalroni as a species were rare enough that she was pretty sure she'd remember even a mention of one. "And who exactly are you?"

Again with the silence. Ahsoka felt irritation bubbling up. Then— "You make no attempt to hide your feelings or your intent. That is a foolish mistake. For one who is considered a war hero, I expected some attempt at subtlety."

She shot right past irritation and into indignation. "_Excuse_ me? Who exactly do you think you are?" He flexed his fingers; the blunt claws grated across the duraplast and Ahsoka gritted her teeth. "If you have a reason for following me, you need to spit it out. Otherwise, I _really_ don't feel the need to deal with anyone from the Temple right now, furball."

To Ahsoka's satisfaction, the Nalroni's eyes narrowed dangerously. It was the first sign of emotion on his face that she'd seen. "Interesting that you would come so close to a conviction. And yet, at the very last moment, your Master reveals the true mastermind."

"What, were you there?"

"Perhaps."

"Perhaps _what_?" she shot back. "It happened. It's over. And does it really matter? Full confession." That fact was still enough to sink her mood, right out of the calm she'd found from sitting in the tapcaf and into the morose stench of the Undercity, suddenly too close again with the smell coming off the canid. She irritably crumpled up the napkin and started to slide out of her chair.

"Perhaps it matters who _you_ believe did it."

Ahsoka blinked, then refocused on the Nalroni. It hit close enough to the truth that she settled back into her chair. One of his ears twitched; she wondered if that was his version of a smile. Or maybe he just had fleas. "I've lived most of my life in the Temple," she said. "Why have I never seen you before?"

His response was easy and unexpected. "I'm an underworld operative."

Again, she stared. Then pointedly glanced around the little shop. "And you just announced that in a public tapcaf. Right." Her fingers again found the familiar curve of her lightsabers and the clips that attached them to her belt.

He held her gaze before speaking again. "I have reason to believe there is a threat to the Jedi Order currently on Coruscant."

Ahsoka tilted her montrals toward where she knew the Temple rose, a blunt, imposing fortress of solitude against the rest of Coruscant. "There's a few hundred of them every day on the main steps, you know."

The Nalroni sniffed, nostrils fluttering with the action. "The protesters are nothing but an inconvenience."

_Especially when they've got an inside person to push their ideas_.

"Exactly," the canid said.

Ahsoka jolted in surprise, then narrowed her eyes at the figure across from her. "Stay out of my head."

"Control your thoughts."

"I'm not a Jedi."

He leaned forward, bringing with him the stench of acrid old oil and burned things. "We have an Order for a reason—and that is to teach one such as you to _control_ your abilities. You are strong. Too strong to simply walk the pedwalks of Coruscant and not expect either enemies or exploiters to find you."

"And that's why they sent you?" She could only assume as much; Master Kenobi had offered her a gift, blessed as such by the Council—but apparently tagged with a condition. Her jaw clenched in renewed irritation.

"No. My orders are extremely specific," he replied. "There is another matter, however, in which I believe you can assist me."

"I really doubt that."

Without a change of expression—really, he had the personality of a castrated bantha—he retrieved a holoemitter from beneath his robe and placed it on the table. With a casual wave of his hand, a flickering blue figure rose and rotated slowly. "Tell me what you know of this masc."

Ahsoka's confusion spiked to new levels as she studied the familiar face of a clone trooper, washed in blue light but utterly unmistakable. She'd served beside him for long enough, after all.

Although why a self-proclaimed underworld operative would have any interest in _him_ was enough to throw her out into the Rishi Maze.

"What, in all that's Force-blessed, would you want to know about _Tup_?"

* * *

**A/N**: Many thanks to **impoeia** for her beta'ing! If you haven't checked out her stories, do yourself a weekend treat and read them.

Happy Halloween, all!

It wasn't my intention for a certain character to be introduced on All Hallows' Eve, but I do love that it worked out that way.


End file.
